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7 



“SIDE BY SIDE . . . KNELT THE TWO WANDERERS” 
See page 179 












TALES OF TERROR 


EDITED BY 

JOSEPH L. FRENCH 

• » 



BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 




^ <b*b 


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<v 


Copyright, 1925 

Br SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

(Incorporated) 


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Printed in the United States of America 


THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



©ClAS;0Uf<3 


FOREWORD 


Terror was one of the primal experiences. While 
its area has been gradually restricted with the 
advance of civilization the record of an actual 
experience has always been eagerly seized upon by 
the curious—in other words the interest in this par¬ 
ticular element of the primal curse has not declined 
one whit throughout the ages. Christopher Morley 
declared only the other day quite frankly that the 
man who had never experienced terror had never 
fully known life. 

Such considerations may be considered a suffi¬ 
cient apology for the presentation of this collection 
of tales to the reader. 

Joseph Lewis French. 


v 


CONTENTS 


PACE 

The Horla. Guy de Maupassant .... 3 

A Terrible Night. W. Clark Russell ... 42 

The Torture by Hope. Villiers de l’Isle Adam 66 

What Was It? Fitz James O’Brien ... 74 

The Mark of the Beast. Rudyard Kipling . 95 

The Temple of Isis. Richard Marsh . . . 115 

The Pit and the Pendulum. Edgar Allan Poe 130 

The Vampire. Bram Stoker.154 

The Avengers. A. Conan Doyle .... 172 








LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


“Side by Side . . . Knelt the Two Wanderers” 

(See page 179) Frontispiece 

FACING PACE 

“It Was Empty! It Was Completely Empty!” 13 

“I . . . Drove Forward Staggering and Reel¬ 
ing” .64 

“A Haggard Man, of Uncertain Age, Clothed 

in Rags”.70 

“We Paced To and Fro, Conversing” ... 80 

“Fleete . . . Was Gravely Grinding the Ashes 
of His Cigar-Butt into the Forehead of 
the Red, Stone Image of Hanuman” . 97 

“The Girl With the Harp . . . Called Out 

to Me”.118 

“At a Wave of My Hand My Deliverers Hur¬ 
ried Tumultuously Away” .... 149 

‘The Count Turned His Face, and the Hellish 

Look . . . Seemed to Leap Into It” . . 160 


IX 




TALES OF TERROR 

























THE HORLA 

GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


May 8th. What a lovely day! I have spent all 
the morning lying in the grass in front of my house, 
under the enormous plantain tree which covers it, 
and shades and shelters the whole of it. I like this 
part of the country and I am fond of living here 
because I am attached to it by deep roots, profound 
and delicate roots which attach a man to the soil on 
which his ancestors were born and died, which 
attach him to what people think and what they eat, 
to the usages as well as to the food, local expres¬ 
sions, the peculiar language of the peasants, to the 
smell of the soil, of the villages and of the atmos¬ 
phere itself. 

I love my house in which I grew up. From my 
windows I can see the Seine which flows by the 
side of my garden, on the other side of the road, 
almost through my grounds, the great and wide 
Seine, which goes to Rouen and Havre, and which 
is covered with boats passing to and fro. 

This unique chronicle of terrors with its Lethine culmination 
was, there is good reason to believe, a matter of personal experi¬ 
ence. De Maupassant, an utterly unmoral man from the beginning, 
was unfortunate in the budding promise of his career to form a 
connection with a beautiful woman who finally ruined him body 
and soul. This story is the inner record of his descent into the 
maelstrom.— Editor. 


4 


THE HORLA 


On the left, down yonder, lies Rouen, that large 
town with its blue roofs, under its pointed Gothic 
towers. They are innumerable, delicate or broad, 
dominated by the spire of the cathedral, and full 
of bells which sound through the blue air on fine 
mornings, sending their sweet and distant iron 
clang to me; their metallic sound which the breeze 
wafts in my direction, now stronger and now 
weaker, according as the wind is stronger or 
lighter. 

What a delicious morning it was! 

About eleven o’clock, a long line of boats drawn 
by a steam tug, as big as a fly, and which scarcely 
puffed while emitting its thick smoke, passed my 
gate. 

After two English schooners, whose red flag flut¬ 
tered toward the sky, there came a magnificent Bra¬ 
zilian three-master; it was perfectly white and won¬ 
derfully clean and shining. I saluted it, I hardly 
know why, except that the sight of the vessel gave 
me great pleasure. 

May 12th. I have had a slight feverish attack 
for the last few days, and I feel ill, or rather I feel 
low-spirited. 

Whence do these mysterious influences come, 
which change our happiness into discouragement, 
and our self-confidence into diffidence? One might 
almost say that the air, the invisible air is full of 
unknowable Forces, whose mysterious presence we 
have to endure. I wake up in the best spirits, with 
an inclination to sing in my throat. Why? I go 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


5 


down by the side of the water, and suddenly, after 
walking a short distance, I return home wretched, 
as if some misfortune were awaiting me there. 
Why? Is it a cold shiver which, passing over my 
skin, has upset my nerves and given me low spirits? 
Is it the form of the clouds, or the color of the sky, 
or the color of the surrounding objects which is so 
changeable, which have troubled my thoughts as 
they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? 
Everything that surrounds us, everything that we 
see without looking at it, everything that we touch 
without knowing it, everything that we handle with¬ 
out feeling it, all that we meet without clearly dis¬ 
tinguishing it, has a rapid, surprising and inexplic¬ 
able effect upon us, and upon our organs, and 
through them on our ideas and on our heart itself. 

How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! 
We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses, 
with our eyes which are unable to perceive what is 
either too small or too great, too near to, or too far 
from us; neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a 
drop of water . . . with our ears that deceive us, 
for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in 
sonorous notes. They are fairies who work the 
miracle of changing that movement into noise, and 
by that metamorphosis give birth to music, which 
makes the mute agitation of nature musical . . . 
with our sense of smell which is smaller than that 
of a dog . . . with our sense of taste which can 
scarcely distinguish the age of a wine! 

Oh! If we only had other organs which would 


6 


THE HORLA 


work other miracles in our favor, what a number of 
fresh things we might discover around us! 

May 16th. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well 
last month! I am feverish, horribly feverish, or 
rather I am in a state of feverish enervation, which 
makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have 
without ceasing that horrible sensation of some 
danger threatening me, that apprehension of some 
coming misfortune or of approaching death, that 
presentiment which is, no doubt, an attack of some 
illness which is still unknown, which germinates 
in the flesh and in the blood. 

May 18th . I have just come from consulting 
my medical man, for I could no longer get any 
sleep. He found that my pulse was high, my eyes 
dilated, my nerves highly strung, but no alarming 
symptoms. I must have a course of shower-baths 
and of bromide of potassium. 

May 25th. No change! My state is really very 
peculiar. As the evening comes on, an incompre¬ 
hensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as 
if night concealed some terrible menace toward me. 
I dine quickly, and then try to read, but I do not 
understand the words, and can scarcely distinguish 
the letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing¬ 
room, oppressed by a feeling of confused and 
irresistible fear, the fear of sleep and fear of my 
bed. 

About ten o’clock I go up to my room. As soon 
as I have got in I double lock, and bolt it: I am 
frightened—of what? Up till the present time I 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


7 


have been frightened of nothing—I open my cup¬ 
boards, and look under my bed; I listen—I listen 
—to what? How strange it is that a simple feeling 
of discomfort, impeded or heightened circulation, 
perhaps the irritation of a nervous thread, a slight 
congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect 
and delicate functions of our living machinery, can 
turn the most light-hearted of men into a melan¬ 
choly one, and make a coward of the bravest! 
Then, I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man 
might wait for the executioner. I wait for its com¬ 
ing with dread, and my heart beats and my legs 
tremble, while my whole body shivers beneath the 
warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I 
suddenly fall asleep, as one would throw oneself 
into a pool of stagnant water in order to drown one¬ 
self. I do not feel coming over me, as I used to do 
formerly, this perfidious sleep which is close to me 
and watching me, which is going to seize me by the 
head, to close my eyes and annihilate me. 

I sleep—a long time—two or three hours per¬ 
haps—then a dream—no—a nightmare lays hold 
on me. I feel that I am in bed and asleep—I feel it 
and I know it—and I feel also that somebody is 
coming close to me, is looking at me, touching me, 
is getting on to my bed, is kneeling on my chest, is 
taking my neck between his hands and squeezing it 
—squeezing it with all his might in order to strangle 
me. 

I struggle, bound by that terrible powerlessness 
which paralyzes us in our dreams; I try to cry out 


8 


THE HORLA 


—but I cannot; I want to move—I cannot; I try, 
with the most violent efforts and out of breath, to 
turn over and throw off this being which is crush¬ 
ing and suffocating me—I cannot! 

And then, suddenly, I wake up, shaken and 
bathed in perspiration; I light a candle and find 
that I am alone, and after that crisis, which occurs 
every night, I at length fall asleep and slumber 
tranquilly till morning. 

June 2d. My state has grown worse. What is 
the matter with me? The bromide does me no 
good, and the shower-baths have no effect whatever. 
Sometimes, in order to tire myself out, though I am 
fatigued enough already, I go for a walk in the 
forest of Roumare. I used to think at first that the 
fresh light and soft air, impregnated with the odor 
of herbs and leaves, would instill new blood into 
my veins and impart fresh energy to my heart. I 
turned into a broad ride in the wood, and then I 
turned toward La Bouille, through a narrow path, 
between two rows of exceedingly tall trees, which 
placed a thick, green, almost black roof between 
the sky and me. 

A sudden shiver ran through me, not a cold 
shiver, but a shiver of agony, and so I hastened my 
steps, uneasy at being alone in the wood, fright¬ 
ened stupidly and without reason, at the profound 
solitude. Suddenly it seemed to me as if I were 
being followed, that somebody was walking at my 
heels, close, quite close to me, near enough to 
touch me. 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


9 


I turned round suddenly, but I was alone. I 
saw nothing behind me except the straight, broad 
ride, empty and bordered by high trees, horribly 
empty; on the other side it also extended until it 
was lost in the distance, and looked just the same, 
terrible. 

I closed my eyes. Why? And then I began to 
turn round on one heel very quickly, just like a 
top. I nearly fell down, and opened my eyes; the 
trees were dancing round me and the earth heaved; 
I was obliged to sit down. Then, ah! I no longer 
remembered how I had come! What a strange 
idea! What a strange, strange idea! I did not 
the least know. I started off to the right, and got 
back into the avenue which had led me into the 
middle of the forest. 

June 3d. I have had a terrible night. I shall 
go away for a few weeks, for no doubt a journey 
will set me up again. 

July 2d. I have come back, quite cured, and 
have had a most delightful trip into the bargain. 
I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had 
not seen before. 

What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at 
Avranches toward the end of the day! The town 
stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public 
garden at the extremity of the town. I uttered a 
cry of astonishment. An extraordinarily large bay 
lay extended before me, as far as my eyes could 
reach, between two hills which were lost to sight in 
the mist; and in the middle of this immense yel- 


10 


THE HORLA 


low bay, under a clear, golden sky, a peculiar hill 
rose up, somber and pointed in the midst of the 
sand. The sun had just disappeared, and under 
the still flaming sky the outline of that fantastic 
rock stood out, which bears on its summit a 
fantastic monument. 

At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low as 
it had been the night before, and I saw that won¬ 
derful abbey rise up before me as I approached it. 

After several hours’ walking, I reached the 
enormous mass of rocks which supports the little 
town, dominated by the great church. Having 
climbed the steep and narrow street, I entered 
the most wonderful Gothic building that has ever 
been built to God on earth, as large as a town, 
full of rooms which seem buried beneath vaulted 
roofs, and lofty galleries supported by columns. 

I entered this gigantic granite jewel which is as 
light as a bit of lace, covered with towers, with 
slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend, 
and which raise their strange heads that bristle 
with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic animals, 
with monstrous flowers, and which are joined to¬ 
gether by finely carved arches, to the blue sky 
by day, and to the black sky by night. 

When I had reached the summit, I said to the 
monk who accompanied me: “Father, how happy 
you must be here!” And he replied: “It is very 
windy, Monsieur;” and so we began to talk while 
watching the rising tide, which ran over the sand 
and covered it with a steel cuirass. 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


11 


And then the monk told me stories, all the old 
stories belonging to the place, legends, nothing 
but legends. 

One of them struck me forcibly. The country 
people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare 
that at night one can hear talking going on in the 
sand, and then that one hears two goats bleat, one 
with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incred¬ 
ulous people declare that it is nothing but the cry 
of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles 
bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; 
but belated fishermen swear that they have met an 
old shepherd, whose head, which is covered by his 
cloak, they can never see, wandering on the downs, 
between two tides, round the little town placed so 
far out of the world, and who is guiding and walk¬ 
ing before them, a he-goat with a man’s face, and a 
she-goat with a woman’s face, and both of them 
with white hair; and talking incessantly, quarreling 
in a strange language, and then suddenly ceasing 
to talk in order to bleat with all their might. 

“Do you believe it?” I asked the monk. “I 
scarcely know,” he replied, and I continued: “If 
there are other beings besides ourselves on this 
earth, how comes it that we have not known it for 
so long a time, or why have you not seen them? 
How is it that I have not seen them?” He replied: 
“Do you see the hundred thousandth part of what 
exists? Look here; there is the wind, which is the 
strongest force in nature, which knocks down men, 
and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the 


12 


THE HORLA 


sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs and 
casts great ships onto the breakers; the wind which 
kills, which whistles, which sighs, which roars— 
have you ever seen it, and can you see it? It exists 
for all that, however.” 

I was silent before this simple reasoning. That 
man was a philosopher, or perhaps a fool; I could 
not say which exactly, so I held my tongue. What 
he had said, had often been in my own thoughts. 

July 3d. I have slept badly; certainly there is 
some feverish influence here, for my coachman is 
suffering in the same way as I am. When I went 
back home yesterday, I noticed his singular pale¬ 
ness, and I asked him: “What is the matter with 
you, Jean?” “The matter is that I never get any 
rest, and my nights devour my days. Since your 
departure, monsieur, there has been a spell over 
me.” 

However, the other servants are all well, but I 
am very frightened of having another attack, my¬ 
self. 

July 4th. I am decidedly taken again; for my 
old nightmares have returned. Last night I felt 
somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life 
from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he 
was sucking it out of my neck, like a leech would 
have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I woke 
up, so beaten, crushed and annihilated that I could 
not move. If this continues for a few days, I shall 
certainly go away again. 

July 5th. Have I lost my reason? What has 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 13 

happened, what I saw last night, is so strange, that 
my head wanders when I think of it! 

As I do now every evening, I had locked my 
door, and then, being thirsty, I drank half a glass 
of water, and I accidentally noticed that the water 
bottle was full up to the cut-glass stopper. 

Then I went to bed and fell into one of my terri¬ 
ble sleeps, from which I was aroused in about two 
hours by a still more terrible shock. 

Picture to yourself a sleeping man who is being 
murdered and who wakes up with a knife in his 
chest, and who is rattling in his throat, covered with 
blood, and who can no longer breathe, and is going 
to die, and does not understand anything at all 
about it—there it is. 

Having recovered my senses, I was thirsty again, 
so I lit a candle and went to the table on which my 
water bottle was. I lifted it up and tilted it over my 
glass, but nothing came out. It was empty! It was 
completely empty! At first I could not understand 
it at all, and then suddenly I was seized by such 
a terrible feeling that I had to sit down, or rather 
I fell into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound 
to look about me, and then I sat down again, over¬ 
come by astonishment and fear, in front of the 
transparent crystal bottle. I looked at it with 
fixed eyes, trying to conjecture, and my hands 
trembled! Somebody had drunk the water, but 
who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely 
only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist, I 
lived, without knowing it, that double mysterious 


14 


THE HORLA 


life which makes us doubt whether there are not 
two beings in us, or whether a strange, unknowable 
and invisible being does not at such moments, when 
our soul is in a state of torpor, animate our captive 
body which obeys this other being, as it does us our¬ 
selves, and more than it does ourselves. 

Oh! Who will understand my horrible agony? 
Who will understand the emotion of a man who 
is sound in mind, wide awake, full of sound sense, 
and who looks in horror at the remains of a little 
water that has disappeared while he was asleep, 
through the glass of a water bottle? And I re¬ 
mained there until it was daylight, without ventur¬ 
ing to go to bed again. 

July 6th. I am going mad. Again all the con¬ 
tents of my water bottle have been drunk during the 
night—or rather, I have drunk it! 

But is it I? Is it I? Who could it be? Who? 
Oh! God! Am I going mad? Who will save me? 

July 10th . I have just been through some sur¬ 
prising ordeals. Decidedly I am mad! And 
yet!— 

On July 6th, before going to bed, I put some 
wine, milk, water, bread and strawberries on my 
table. Somebody drank—I drank—all the water 
and a little of the milk, but neither the wine, bread 
nor the strawberries were touched. 

On the seventh of July I renewed the same ex¬ 
periment, with the same results, and on July 8th, 
I left out the water and the milk and nothing was 
touched. 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


15 


Lastly, on July 9th I put only water and milk on 
my table, taking care to wrap up the bottles in 
white muslin and to tie down the stoppers. Then 
I rubbed my lips, my beard and my hands with pen¬ 
cil lead, and went to bed. 

Irresistible sleep seized me, which was soon fol¬ 
lowed by a terrible awakening. I had not moved, 
and my sheets were not marked. I rushed to the 
table. The muslin round the bottles remained 
intact; I undid the string, trembling with fear. All 
the water had been drunk, and so had the milk! 
Ah! Great God!— 

I must start for Paris immediately. 

July 12th . Paris. I must have lost my head 
during the last few days! I must be the plaything 
of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a 
somnambulist, or that I have been brought under 
the power of one of those influences which have 
been proved to exist, but which have hitherto been 
inexplicable, which are called suggestions. In any 
case, my mental state bordered on madness, and 
twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore me to 
my equilibrium. 

Yesterday after doing some business and paying 
some visits which instilled fresh and invigorating 
mental air into me, I wound up my evening at the 
Theatre Frangais . A play by Alexandre Dumas 
the Younger was being acted, and his active and 
powerful mind completed my cure. Certainly 
solitude is dangerous for active minds. We re¬ 
quire men who can think and can talk, around us. 


16 


THE HORLA 


When we are alone for a long time we people 
space with phantoms. 

I returned along the boulevards to my hotel in 
excellent spirits. Amid the jostling of the crowd 
I thought, not without irony, of my terrors and 
surmises of the previous week, because I believed, 
yes, I believed, that an invisible being lived be¬ 
neath my roof. How weak our head is, and how 
quickly it is terrified and goes astray, as soon as we 
are struck by a small, incomprehensible fact. 

Instead of concluding with these simple words: 
“I do not understand because the cause escapes 
me,” we immediately imagine terrible mysteries 
and supernatural powers. 

July 14th. Fete of the Republic. I walked 
through the streets, and the crackers and flags 
amused me like a child. Still it is very foolish to 
be merry on a fixed date, by a Government decree. 
The populace is an imbecile flock of sheep, now 
steadily patient, and now in ferocious revolt. Say 
to it: “Amuse yourself,” and it amuses itself. Say 
to it: “Go and fight with your neighbor,” and it 
goes and fights. Say to it: “Vote for the Em¬ 
peror,” and it votes for the Emperor, and then 
say to it: “Vote for the Republic,” and it votes for 
the Republic. 

Those who direct it are also stupid; but instead 
of obeying men they obey principles, which can 
only be stupid, sterile, and false, for the very 
reason that they are principles, that is to say, ideas 
which are considered as certain and unchangeable, 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


17 


in this world where one is certain of nothing, since 
light is an illusion and noise is an illusion. 

July 16th. I saw some things yesterday that 
troubled me very much. 

I was dining at my cousin’s, Madame Sable’s, 
whose husband is colonel of the 76th Chasseurs at 
Limoges. There were two young women there, one 
of whom had married a medical man, Dr. Parent, 
who devotes himself a great deal to nervous dis¬ 
eases and the extraordinary manifestations to 
which at this moment experiments in hypnotism and 
suggestion give rise. 

He related to us at some length, the enormous 
results obtained by English scientists and the doc¬ 
tors of the medical school at Nancy, and the facts 
which he adduced appeared to me so strange, that 
I declared that I was altogether incredulous. 

“We are,” he declared, “on the point of dis¬ 
covering one of the most important secrets of na¬ 
ture, I mean to say, one of its most important 
secrets on this earth, for there are certainly some 
which are of a different kind of importance up in 
the stars, yonder. Ever since man has thought, 
since he has been able to express and write down 
his thoughts, he has felt himself close to a mystery 
which is impenetrable to his coarse and imperfect 
senses, and he endeavors to supplement the want 
of power of his organs by the efforts of his intel¬ 
lect. As long as that intellect still remained in its 
elementary stage, this intercourse with invisible 
spirits assumed forms which were commonplace 


18 


THE HORLA 


though terrifying. Thence sprang the popular be¬ 
lief in the supernatural, the legends of wandering 
spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, ghosts, I might even 
say the legend of God, for our conceptions of the 
workman-creator, from whatever religion they may 
have come down to us, are certainly the most medi¬ 
ocre, the stupidest and the most unacceptable in¬ 
ventions that ever sprang from the frightened brain 
of any human creatures. Nothing is truer than 
what Voltaire says: ‘God made man in His own 
image, but man has certainly paid Him back 
again.’ 

“But for rather more than a century, men seem 
to have had a presentiment of something new. 
Mesmer and some others have put us on an unex¬ 
pected track, and especially within the last two 
or three years, we have arrived at really surprising 
results.” 

My cousin, who is also very incredulous, smiled, 
and Dr. Parent said to her: “Would you like me to 
try and send you to sleep, Madame?” “Yes, cer¬ 
tainly.” 

She sat down in an easy-chair, and he began to 
look at her fixedly, so as to fascinate her. I sud¬ 
denly felt myself somewhat uncomfortable, with a 
beating heart and a choking feeling in my throat. I 
saw that Madame Sable’s eyes were growing heavy, 
her mouth twitched and her bosom heaved, and at 
the end of ten minutes she was asleep. 

“Stand behind her,” the doctor said to me, and 
so I took a seat behind her. He put a visiting card 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


19 


into her hands, and said to her: “This is a looking- 
glass; what do you see in it?” And she replied: 
“I see my cousin.” “What is he doing?” “He is 
twisting his mustache.” “And now?” “He is tak¬ 
ing a photograph out of his pocket.” “Whose 
photograph is it?” “His own.” 

That was true, and that photograph had been 
given me that same evening at the hotel. 

“What is his attitude in this portrait?” “He is 
standing up with his hat in his hand.” 

So she saw on that card, on that piece of white 
pasteboard, as if she had seen it in a looking-glass. 

The young women were frightened, and ex¬ 
claimed: “That is quite enough! Quite, quite 
enough!” 

But the doctor said to her authoritatively: “You 
will get up at eight o’clock tomorrow morning; 
then you will go and call on your cousin at his 
hotel and ask him to lend you five thousand francs 
which your husband demands of you, and which 
he will ask for when he sets out on his coming 
journey.” 

Then he woke her up. 

On returning to my hotel, I thought over this 
curious seance and I was assailed by doubts, not as 
to my cousin’s absolute and undoubted good faith, 
for I had known her as well as if she had been 
my own sister ever since she was a child, but as to 
a possible trick on the doctor’s part. Had not he, 
perhaps, kept a glass hidden in his hand, which he 
showed to the young woman in her sleep, at the 


20 


THE HORLA 


same time as he did the card? Professional con¬ 
jurers do things which are just as singular. 

So I went home and to bed, and this morning, 
at about half-past eight, I was awakened by my 
footman, who said to me: “Madame Sable has 
asked to see you immediately, Monsieur,” so I 
dressed hastily and went to her. 

She sat down in some agitation, with her eyes 
on the floor, and without raising her veil she said 
to me: “My dear cousin, I am going to ask a great 
favor of you.” “What is it, cousin?” “I do not 
like to tell you, and yet I must. I am in absolute 
want of five thousand francs.” “What, you?” 
“Yes, I, or rather my husband, who has asked me to 
procure them for him.” 

I was so stupefied that I stammered out my 
answers. I asked myself whether she had not 
really been making fun of me with Doctor Parent, 
if it were not merely a very well-acted farce which 
had been got up beforehand. On looking at her 
attentively, however, my doubts disappeared. She 
was trembling with grief, so painful was this step 
to her, and I was sure that her throat was full of 
sobs. 

I knew that she was very rich and so I continued: 
“What! Has not your husband five thousand 
francs at his disposal? Gome, think. Are you 
sure that he commissioned you to ask me for 
them?” 

She hesitated for a few seconds, as if she were 
making a great effort to search her memory, and 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 21 

then she replied: “Yes . . . yes, I am quite sure 
of it.” “He has written to you?” 

She hesitated again and reflected, and I guessed 
the torture of her thoughts. She did not know. 
She only knew that she was to borrow five thousand 
francs of me for her husband. So she told a lie. 

“Yes, he has written to me.” “When, pray? 
You did not mention it to me yesterday.” “I re¬ 
ceived his letter this morning.” “Can you show it 
me?” “No; no ... no ... it contained pri¬ 
vate matters . . . things too personal to our¬ 
selves. ... I burnt it.” “So your husband runs 
into debt?” 

She hesitated again, and then murmured: “I do 
not know.” Thereupon I said bluntly: “I have not 
five thousand francs at my disposal at this mo¬ 
ment, my dear cousin.” 

She uttered a kind of cry as if she were in pain 
and said: “Oh! oh! I beseech you, I beseech you to 
get them for me . . .” 

She got excited and clasped her hands as if she 
were praying to me! I heard her voice change its 
tone; she wept and stammered, harassed and 
dominated by the irresistible order that she had 
received. 

“Oh! oh! I beg you to ... if you knew what 
I am suffering. ... I want them today.” 

I had pity on her: “You shall have them by and 
by, I swear to you.” “Oh! thank you! thank you! 
How kind you are!” 

I continued: “Do you remember what took place 


22 


THE HORLA 


at your house last night?” “Yes.” “Do you re¬ 
member that Doctor Parent sent you to sleep?” 
“Yes.” “Oh! Very well then; he ordered you to 
come to me this morning to borrow five thousand 
francs, and at this moment you are obeying that 
suggestion.” 

She considered for a few moments, and then 
replied: “But as it is my husband who wants 
them . . .” 

For a whole hour I tried to convince her, but 
could not succeed, and when she had gone I went to 
the doctor. He was just going out, and he listened 
to me with a smile, and said: “Do you believe 
now?” “Yes, I cannot help it.” “Let us go to your 
cousin’s.” 

She was already dozing on a couch, overcome 
with fatigue. The doctor felt her pulse, looked at 
her for some time with one hand raised toward her 
eyes which she closed by degrees under the irresist¬ 
ible power of this magnetic influence, and when she 
was asleep, he said: 

“Your husband does not require the five thou¬ 
sand francs any longer! You must, therefore, 
forget that you asked your cousin to lend them to 
you, and, if he speaks to you about it, you will 
not understand him.” 

Then he woke her up, and I took out a pocket- 
book and said: “Here is what you asked me for 
this morning, my dear cousin.” But she was so 
surprised that I did not venture to persist; never¬ 
theless, I tried to recall the circumstance to her, 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


23 


but she denied it vigorously, thought that I was 
making fun of her, and in the end very nearly lost 
her temper. 

There! I have just come back, and I have not 
been able to eat any lunch, for this experiment has 
altogether upset me. 

July 19th. Many people to whom I have told the 
adventure have laughed at me. I no longer know 
what to think. The wise man says: Perhaps? 

July 21st. I dined at Bougival, and then I spent 
the evening at a boatmen’s ball. Decidedly every¬ 
thing depends on place and surroundings. It would 
he the height of folly to believe in the supernatural 
on the lie de la Grenouilliere 1 . . . but on the top 
of Mont Saint-Michel? . . . and in India? We 
are terribly under the influence of our surround¬ 
ings. I shall return home next week. 

July 30th. I came back to my own house yes¬ 
terday. Everything is going on well. 

August 2d. Nothing fresh; it is splendid 
weather, and I spend my days in watching the 
Seine flow past. 

August 4th. Quarrels among my servants. 
They declare that the glasses are broken in the 
cupboards at night. The footman accuses the 
cook, who accuses the needlewoman, who accuses 
the other two. Who is the culprit? A clever per¬ 
son, to be able to tell. 

August 6th. This time I am not mad. I have 
seen ... I have seen ... I have seen! ... I 


1 Frog island. 


24 THE HORLA 

can doubt no longer ... I have seen it! 

I was walking at two o’clock among my rose 
trees, in the full sunlight ... in the walk bor¬ 
dered by autumn roses which are beginning to fall. 
As I stopped to look at a Geant de Bataille , which 
had three splendid blooms, I distinctly saw the 
stalk of one of the roses bend, close to me, as if an 
invisible hand had bent it, and then break, as if 
that hand had picked it! Then the flower raised 
itself, following the curve which a hand would 
have described in carrying it toward a mouth, and 
it remained suspended in the transparent air, all 
alone and motionless, a terrible red spot, three 
yards from my eyes. In desperation I rushed at it 
to take it! I found nothing; it had disappeared. 
Then I was seized with furious rage against my¬ 
self, for it is not allowable for a reasonable and 
serious man to have such hallucinations. 

But was it a hallucination? I turned round to 
look for the stalk, and I found it immediately 
under the bush, freshly broken, between two other 
roses which remained on the branch, and I re¬ 
turned home then, with a much disturbed mind; 
for I am certain now, as certain as I am of the alter¬ 
nation of day and night, that there exists close to 
me an invisible being that lives on milk and on 
water, which can touch objects, take them and 
change their places; which is, consequently, en¬ 
dowed with a material nature, although it is im¬ 
perceptible to our senses, and which lives as I do, 
under my roof. . . . 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


25 


August 7th . I slept tranquilly. He drank the 
water out of my decanter, but did not disturb my 
sleep. 

I ask myself whether I am mad. As I was walk¬ 
ing just now in the sun by the riverside, doubts as 
to my own sanity arose in me; not vague doubts 
such as I have had hitherto, but precise and abso¬ 
lute doubts. I have seen mad people, and I have 
known some who have been quite intelligent, lucid, 
even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except 
on one point. They spoke clearly, readily, pro¬ 
foundly on everything, when suddenly their 
thoughts struck upon the breakers of their mad¬ 
ness and broke to pieces there, and were dispersed 
and foundered in that furious and terrible sea, full 
of bounding waves, fogs and squalls, which is 
called madness . 

I certainly should think that I was mad, absolutely 
mad, if I were not conscious, did not perfectly know 
my state, if I did fathom it by analyzing it with the 
most complete lucidity. I should, in fact, be a 
reasonable man who was laboring under a hal¬ 
lucination. Some unknown disturbance must have 
been excited in my brain, one of those disturb¬ 
ances which physiologists of the present day try to 
note and to fix precisely, and that disturbance 
must have caused a profound gulf in my mind and 
in the order and logic of my ideas. Similar phe¬ 
nomena occur in the dreams which lead us through 
the most unlikely phantasmagoria, without causing 
us any surprise, because our verifying apparatus 


26 


THE HORLA 


and our sense of control has gone to sleep, while 
our imaginative faculty wakes and works. Is it 
not possible that one of the imperceptible keys of 
the cerebral finger-board has been paralyzed in 
me? Some men lose the recollection of proper 
names, or of verbs or of numbers or merely of 
dates, in consequence of an accident. The localiza¬ 
tion of all the particles of thought has been proved 
nowadays; what then would there be surprising in 
the fact that my faculty of controlling the unreality 
of certain hallucinations should be destroyed for 
the time being! 

I thought of all this as I walked by the side of 
the water. The sun was shining brightly on the 
river and made earth delightful, while it filled my 
looks with love for life, for the swallows, whose 
agility is always delightful in my eyes, for the 
plants by the riverside, whose rustling is a pleasure 
to my ears. 

By degrees, however, an inexplicable feeling of 
discomfort seized me. It seemed to me as if some 
unknown force were numbing and stopping me, 
were preventing me from going farther and were 
calling me back. I felt that painful wish to re¬ 
turn which oppresses you when you have left a 
beloved invalid at home, and when you are seized 
by a presentiment that he is worse. 

I, therefore, returned in spite of myself, feel¬ 
ing certain that I should find some bad news 
awaiting me, a letter or a telegram. There was 
nothing, however, and I was more surprised and 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


27 


uneasy than if I had had another fantastic vision. 

August 8th. I spent a terrible evening yester¬ 
day. He does not show himself any more, but I 
feel that he is near me, watching me, looking at 
me, penetrating me, dominating me and more re¬ 
doubtable when he hides himself thus, than if he 
were to manifest his constant and invisible pres¬ 
ence by supernatural phenomena. However, I slept. 

August 9th. Nothing, but I am afraid. 

August 10th. Nothing; what will happen to¬ 
morrow? 

August 11th. Still nothing; I cannot stop at 
home with this fear hanging over me and these 
thoughts in my mind; I shall go away. 

August 12th. Ten o’clock at night. All day long 
I have been trying to get away, and have not been 
able. I wished to accomplish this simple and easy 
act of liberty—go out—get into my carriage in 
order to go to Rouen—and I have not been able to 
do it. What is the reason? 

August 13th. When one is attacked by certain 
maladies, all the springs of our physical being ap¬ 
pear to be broken, all our energies destroyed, all 
our muscles relaxed, our bones to have become as 
soft as our flesh, and our blood as liquid as water. 
I am experiencing that in my moral being in a 
strange and distressing manner. I have no longer 
any strength, any courage, any self-control, nor 
even any power to set my own will in motion. I 
have no power left to will anything, but some one 
does it for me and I obey. 


28 


THE HORLA 


August 14th . I am lost! Somebody possesses 
my soul and governs it! Somebody orders all my 
acts, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am 
no longer anything in myself, nothing except an 
enslaved and terrified spectator of all the things 
which I do. I wish to go out; I cannot. He does 
not wish to, and so I remain, trembling and dis¬ 
tracted in the armchair in which he keeps me sit¬ 
ting. I merely wish to get up and to rouse myself, 
so as to think that I am still master of myself; I 
cannot! I am riveted to my chair, and my chair 
adheres to the ground in such a manner that no 
force could move us. 

Then suddenly, I must, I must go to the bottom 
of my garden to pick some strawberries and eat 
them, and I go there. I pick the strawberries and 
I eat them! Oh! my God! my God! Is there a 
God? If there be one, deliver me! save me! suc¬ 
cor me! Parclon! Pity! Mercy! Save me! Oh! 
what sufferings! what torture! what horror! 

August 15th. Certainly this is the way in which 
my poor cousin was possessed and swayed, when 
she came to borrow five thousand francs of me. 
She was under the power of a strange will which 
had entered into her, like another soul, like an¬ 
other parasitic and ruling soul. Is the world com¬ 
ing to an end? 

But who is he, this invisible being that rules 
me? This unknowable being, this rover of a super¬ 
natural race? 

Invisible beings exist, then! How is it then that 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


29 


since the beginning of the world they have never 
manifested themselves in such a manner precisely 
as they do to me? I have never read anything 
which resembles what goes on in my house. Oh! 
If I could only leave it, if I could only go away 
and flee, so as never to return, I should be saved; 
but I cannot. 

August 16th . I managed to escape today for 
two hours, like a prisoner who finds the door of 
his dungeon accidentally open. I suddenly felt 
that I was free and that he was far away, and so I 
gave orders to put the horses in as quickly as pos¬ 
sible, and I drove to Rouen. Oh! How delight¬ 
ful to be able to say to a man who obeyed you: “Go 
to Rouen!” 

I made him pull up before the library, and I 
begged them to lend me Dr. Herrmann Herestauss’s 
treatise on the unknown inhabitants of the ancient 
and modem world. 

Then, as I was getting into my carriage, I in¬ 
tended to say: “To the railway station!” but instead 
of this I shouted—I did not say, but I shouted— 
in such a loud voice that all the passers-by turned 
round: “Home!” and I fell back onto the cushion 
of my carriage, overcome by mental agony. He 
had found me out and regained possession of me. 

August 17th. Oh! What a night! what a night! 
And yet it seems to me that I ought to rejoice. I 
read until one o’clock in the morning! Herestauss, 
Doctor of Philosophy and Theogony, wrote the his¬ 
tory and the manifestation of all those invisible 


30 


THE HORLA 


beings which hover around man, or of whom he 
dreams. He describes their origin, their domains, 
their power; but none of them resembles the one 
which haunts me. One might say that man, ever 
since he has thought, has had a foreboding of, and 
feared a new being, stronger than himself, his suc¬ 
cessor in this world, and that, feeling him near, and 
not being able to foretell the nature of that master, 
he has, in his terror, created the whole race of 
hidden beings, of vague phantoms born of fear. 

Having, therefore, read until one o’clock in the 
morning, I went and sat down at the open window, 
in order to cool my forehead and my thoughts, in 
the calm night air. It was very pleasant and 
warm! How I should have enjoyed such a night 
formerly! 

There was no moon, but the stars darted out 
their rays in the dark heavens. Who inhabits those 
worlds? What forms, what living beings, what 
animals are there yonder? What do those who are 
thinkers in those distant worlds know more than 
we do? What can they do more than we can? 
What do they see which we do not know? Will not 
one of them, some day or other, traversing space, 
appear on our earth to conquer it, just as the Norse¬ 
men formerly crossed the sea in order to subjugate 
nations more feeble than themselves? 

We are so weak, so unarmed, so ignorant, so 
small, we who live on this particle of mud which 
turns round in a drop of water. 

I fell asleep, dreaming thus in the cool night 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


31 


air, and then, having slept for about three quarters 
of an hour, I opened my eyes without moving, 
awakened by I know not what confused and strange 
sensation. At first I saw nothing, and then sud¬ 
denly it appeared to me as if a page of a book 
which had remained open on my table, turned 
over of its own accord. Not a breath of air had 
come in at my window, and I was surprised and 
waited. In about four minutes, I saw, I saw, yes I 
saw with my own eyes another page lift itself up 
and fall down on the others, as if a finger had 
turned it over. My armchair was empty, appeared 
empty, but I knew that he was there, he, and sitting 
in my place, and that he was reading. With a 
furious bound, the bound of an enraged wild beast 
that wishes to disembowel its tamer, I crossed my 
room to seize him, to strangle him, to kill him! 
. . . But before I could reach it, my chair fell over 
as if somebody had run away from me . . . my 
table rocked, my lamp fell and w T ent out, and my 
window closed as if some thief had been surprised 
and had fled out into the night, shutting it behind 
him. 

So he had run away: he had been afraid; he, 
afraid of me! 

So . . . so . . . tomorrow ... or later . . . 
some day or other ... I should be able to hold 
him in my clutches and crush him against the 
ground! Do not dogs occasionally bite and strangle 
their masters? 

August 18th . I have been thinking the whole 


32 


THE HORLA 


day long. Oh! yes, I will obey him, follow his 
impulses, fulfill all his wishes, show myself 
humble, submissive, a coward. He is the stronger; 
but an hour will come . . 

August 19th. I know, ... I know ... I 
know all! I have just read the following in the 
Revue du Monde Scientifique: “A curious piece of 
news comes to us from Rio de Janeiro. Madness, 
an epidemic of madness, which may be compared 
to that contagious madness which attacked the 
people of Europe in the Middle Ages, is at this 
moment raging in the Province of Sao Paulo. The 
frightened inhabitants are leaving their houses, de¬ 
serting their villages, abandoning their land, say¬ 
ing that they are pursued, possessed, governed like 
human cattle by invisible, though tangible beings, 
a species of vampire, which feed on their life while 
they are asleep, and who, besides, drink water and 
milk without appearing to touch any other nourish¬ 
ment. 

“Professor Dom Pedro Henriques, accompanied 
by several medical savants, has gone to the Prov¬ 
ince of Sao Paulo in order to study the origin and 
the manifestations of this surprising madness on 
the spot, and to propose such measures to the Em¬ 
peror as may appear to him to be most fitted to re¬ 
store the mad population to reason.” 

Ah! Ah! I remember now that fine Brazilian 
three-master which passed in front of my win¬ 
dows as it was going up the Seine, on the 8th of 
last May! I thought it looked so pretty, so white 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


33 


and bright! That Being was on board of her, com¬ 
ing from there, where its race sprang from. And 
it saw me! It saw my house which was also white, 
and it sprang from the ship onto the land. Oh! 
Good heavens! 

Now I know, I can divine. The reign of man is 
over, and he has come. He whom disquieted priests 
exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark nights, 
without yet seeing him appear, to whom the pre¬ 
sentiments of the transient masters of the world 
lent all the monstrous or graceful forms of gnomes, 
spirits, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After 
the coarse conceptions of primitive fear, more 
clear-sighted men foresaw it more clearly. Mes- 
mer divined him, and ten years ago physicians ac¬ 
curately discovered the nature of his power, even 
before he exercised it himself. They played with 
that weapon of their new Lord, the sway of a mys¬ 
terious will over the human soul, which had be¬ 
come enslaved. They called it magnetism, hypno¬ 
tism, suggestion . . . what do I know? I have 
seen them amusing themselves like impudent chil¬ 
dren with this horrible power! Woe to us! Woe 
to man! He has come, the . . . the . . . what 
does he call himself . . . the ... I fancy that 
he is shouting out his name to me and I do not hear 
him . . . the . . . yes ... he is shouting it out 
. . . I am listening ... I cannot . . . repeat 
. . . it . . . Horla ... I have heard . . . the 
Horla . . . it is he . . .the Horla ... he has 
come! . . . 


34 


THE HORLA 


Ah! the vulture has eaten the pigeon, the wolf 
has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buf¬ 
falo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion 
with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but 
the Horla will make of man what we have made of 
the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave and 
his food, by the mere power of his will. Woe to 
us! 

But, nevertheless, the animal sometimes revolts 
and kills the man who has subjugated it. ... I 
should also like ... I shall be able to . . . but 
I must know him, touch him, see him! Learned 
men say that beasts’ eyes, as they differ from ours, 
do not distinguish like ours do . . . And my eye 
cannot distinguish this newcomer who is oppressing 
me. 

Why? Oh! Now I remember the words of the 
monk at Mont Saint-Michel: “Can we see the hun¬ 
dred-thousandth part of what exists? Look here; 
there is the wind which is the strongest force in na¬ 
ture, which knocks men, and blows down buildings, 
uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of 
water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships onto the 
breakers; the wind which kills, which whistles, 
which sighs, which roars—have you ever seen it, 
and can you see it? It exists for all that, how¬ 
ever!” 

And I went on thinking: my eyes are so weak, 
so imperfect, that they do not even distinguish hard 
bodies, if they are as transparent as glass! . . . if 
a glass without tinfoil behind it were to bar my 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


35 


way, I should run into it, just as a bird which has 
flown into a room breaks its head against the win¬ 
dow panes. A thousand things, moreover, deceive 
him and lead him astray. How should it then be 
surprising that he cannot perceive a fresh body 
which is traversed by the light? 

A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound 
to come! Why should we be the last? We do not 
distinguish it, like all the others created before us. 
The reason is, that its nature is more perfect, its 
body finer and more finished than ours, that ours 
is so weak, so awkwardly conceived, encumbered 
with organs that are always tired, always on the 
strain like locks that are too complicated, which 
lives like a plant and like a beast, nourishing itself 
with difficulty on air, herbs and flesh, an animal 
machine which is a prey to maladies, to malforma¬ 
tions, to decay; broken-winded, badly regulated, 
simple and eccentric, ingeniously badly made, a 
coarse and a delicate work, the outline of a being 
which might become intelligent and grand. 

We are only a few, so few in this world, from 
the oyster up to man. Why should there not be 
one more, when once that period is accomplished 
which separates the successive apparitions from all 
the different species? 

Why not one more? Why not, also, other trees 
with immense, splendid flowers, perfuming whole 
regions? Why not other elements besides fire, air, 
earth and water? There are four, only four, those 
nursing fathers of various beings! What a pity! 


36 


THE HORLA 


Why are there not forty, four hundred, four thou¬ 
sand? How poor everything is, how mean and 
wretched! grudgingly given, dryly invented, 
clumsily made! Ah! the elephant and the hippo¬ 
potamus, what grace! And the camel, what ele¬ 
gance! 

But, the butterfly you will say, a flying flower! I 
dream of one that should be as large as a hun¬ 
dred worlds, with wings whose shape, beauty, 
colors, and motion I cannot even express. But I 
see it ... it flutters from star to star, refreshing 
them and perfuming them with the light and har¬ 
monious breath of its flight! . . . And the people 
up there look at it as it passes in an ecstasy of 
delight! . . . 

What is the matter with me? It is he, the Horla 
who haunts me, and who makes me think of these 
foolish things! He is within me, he is becoming 
my soul; I shall kill him! 

August 19th. I shall kill him. I have seen 
him! Yesterday I sat down at my table and pre¬ 
tended to write very assiduously. I knew quite well 
that he would come prowling round me, quite close 
to me, so close that I might perhaps be able to touch 
him, to seize him. And then! . . . then I should 
have the strength of desperation; I should have 
my hands, my knees, my chest, my forehead, my 
teeth to strangle him, to crush him, to bite him, 
to tear him to pieces. And I watched for him with 
all my overexcited organs. 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


37 


I had lighted my two lamps and the eight wax 
candles on my mantelpiece, as if by this light I 
could have discovered him. 

My bed, my old oak bed with its columns, was 
opposite to me; on my right was the fireplace; on 
my left the door which was carefully closed, after 
I had left it open for some time, in order to attract 
him; behind me was a very high wardrobe with a 
looking-glass in it, which served me to make my 
toilet every day, and in which I was in the habit of 
looking at myself from head to foot every time I 
passed it. 

So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive 
him, for he also was watching me, and suddenly I 
felt, I was certain that he was reading over my 
shoulder, that he was there, almost touching my 
ear. 

I got up so quickly, with my hands extended, 
that I almost fell. Eh! well? ... It was as bright 
as at midday, but I did not see myself in the glass! 
... It was empty, clear, profound, full of light! 
But my figure was not reflected in it . . . and I, 
I was opposite to it! I saw the large, clear glass 
from top to bottom, and I looked at it with unsteady 
eyes; and I did not dare to advance; I did not 
venture to make a movement, nevertheless, feeling 
perfectly that he was there, but that he would 
escape me again, he whose imperceptible body 
had absorbed my reflection. 

How frightened I was! And then suddenly I be¬ 
gan to see myself through a mist in the depths of 


38 


THE HORLA 


the looking-glass, in a mist as it were through a 
sheet of water; and it seemed to me as if this water 
were flowing slowly from left to right, and making 
my figure clearer every moment. It was like the 
end of an eclipse. Whatever it was that hid me, 
did not appear to possess any clearly defined out¬ 
lines, but a sort of opaque transparency, which 
gradually grew clearer. 

At last I was able to distinguish myself com¬ 
pletely, as I do every day when I look at myself. 

I had seen it! And the horror of it remained 
with me and makes me shudder even now. 

August 20th. How could I kill it, as I could not 
get hold of it? Poison? But it would see me mix 
it with the water; and then, would our poisons have 
any effect on its impalpable body? No ... no 
... no doubt about the matter. . . . Then? . . . 
then? . . . 

August 21st. I sent for a blacksmith from 
Rouen, and ordered iron shutters of him for my 
room, such as some private hotels in Paris have on 
the ground floor, for fear of thieves, and he is 
going to make me a similar door as well. I have 
made myself out as a coward, but I do not care 
about that! ... • 

September 10th. Rouen, Hotel Continental. It 
is done; . . . it is done . . . but is he dead? My 
mind is thoroughly upset by what I have seen. 

Well, then, yesterday the locksmith having put 
on the iron shutters and door, I left everything 
open until midnight, although it was getting cold. 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


39 


Suddenly I felt that he was there, and joy, mad 
joy, took possession of me. I got up softly, and I 
walked to the right and left for some time, so that 
he might not guess anything; then I took off my 
boots and put on my slippers carelessly; then I 
fastened the iron shutters and going back to the 
door quickly I double-locked it with a padlock, 
putting the key into my pocket. 

Suddenly I noticed that he was moving restlessly 
round me, that in his turn he was frightened and 
was ordering me to let him out. I nearly yielded, 
though I did not yet, but putting my back to the 
door I half opened it, just enough to allow me to 
go out backward, and as I am very tall, my head 
touched the lintel. I was sure that he had not been 
able to escape, and I shut him up quite alone, quite 
alone. What happiness! I had him fast. Then I 
ran downstairs; in the drawing-room, which was 
under my bedroom, I took the two lamps* and I 
poured all the oil onto the carpet, the furniture, 
everywhere; then I set fire to it and made my 
escape, after having carefully double-locked the 
door. 

I went and hid myself at the bottom of the 
garden in a clump of laurel bushes. How long it 
was! how long it was! Everything was dark, silent, 
motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but 
heavy banks of clouds which one could not see, but 
which weighed, oh! so heavily on my soul. 

I looked at my house and waited. How long it 
was! I already began to think that the fire had 


40 


THE HORLA 


gone out of its own accord, or that he had extin¬ 
guished it, when one of the lower windows gave 
way under the violence of the flames, and a long, 
soft, caressing sheet of red flame mounted up the 
white wall and kissed it as high as the roof. The 
light fell onto the trees, the branches, and the 
leaves, and a shiver of fear pervaded them also! 
The birds awoke; a dog began to howl, and it 
seemed to me as if the day were breaking! Almost 
immediately two other windows flew into frag¬ 
ments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part 
of my house was nothing but a terrible furnace. 
But a cry, a horrible, shrill, heart-rending cry, a 
woman’s cry, sounded through the night, and two 
garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the 
servants! I saw the terror-struck faces, and their 
frantically waving arms! . . . 

Then, overwhelmed with horror, I set off to run 
to the village, shouting: “Help! help! fire! fire!” I 
met some people who were already coming onto the 
scene, and I went back with them to see! 

By this time the house was nothing but a horrible 
and magnificent funeral pile, a monstrous funeral 
pile which lit up the whole country, a funeral pile 
where men were burning, and where he was burn¬ 
ing also, He, He, my prisoner, that new Being, the 
new master, the Horla! 

Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the 
walls, and a volcano of flames darted up to the 
sky. Through all the windows which opened onto 


GUY DE MAUPASSANT 


41 


that furnace, I saw the flames darting, and I thought 
that he was there, in that kiln, dead. 

Dead? perhaps? . . . His body? Was not his 
body, which was transparent, indestructible by such 
means as would kill ours? 

If he was not dead? . . . Perhaps time alone 
has power over that Invisible and Redoubtable Be¬ 
ing. Why this transparent, unrecognizable body, 
this body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear 
ills, infirmities and premature destruction? 

Premature destruction? All human terror 
springs from that! After man the Horla. After 
him who can die every day, at any hour, at any 
moment, by any accident, he came who was only 
to die at his own proper hour and minute, because 
he had touched the limits of his existence! 

No . . . no . . . without any doubt . . . he is 
not dead. Then . . . then ... I suppose I must 
kill myself! 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


W. CLARK RUSSELL* 

Miss Laura arrived at the dinner table. She was 
pale with the heat. She toyed with a morsel of cold 
fowl and sipped seltzer and hock. 

“The dead calm,” said I, “gives you a young 
lady’s appetite.” 

“I am here,” she answered, “because I do not 
know where else to be.” 

“You are here,” said I, “because you are good 
and kind, and know that I delight in your society.” 

She fanned herself. As the mercury rises past a 
certain degree sentiment falls. Emotion lies north 
and south of the line, hardly on it unless in a black 
skin. How death-like was the repose upon the 
yacht! The sun had gone out in the western thick¬ 
ness with a flare like the snuff of a blown-out 
candle, and a sort of brown dimness as of smoke 
followed him instead of the staring red and living 
glare that accompanies his descent in clear weather 
in those parts. The cabin lamp was lighted; it 
hung without a phantom of vibration, and sitting 
at that table was like eating in one’s dining room 
ashore. I glanced my eye round the interior. 
Delicate and elegant was the appearance of the 

* From An Ocean Tragedy. 

42 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


43 


cabin. The mirrors multiplied the white oil flames 
of the silver burners; the carpet, the drapery, the 
upholstery of chairs and couches stole out in rich 
soft dyes upon the gaze. The table was radiant 
with white damask and glass and plate and plants. 
Confronting me was the charming figure of the 
sweet girl with whom I had been intimately asso¬ 
ciated for several weeks. Her golden hair sparkled 
in the lamplight; from time to time she would lift 
her violet eye with a drowsy gleam in it to mine. 

“Heat depresses the spirits,” said I. “I feel 
dull. What is going to happen, I wonder?” 

“Is the wind ever likely to blow again?” she 
asked. 

“Yes. I shall have the pleasure of conducting 
you on deck presently, when I will show you a 
fine bank of clouds in the south that will be re¬ 
vealed to us by lightning, if I truly gather the 
character of the vapour from the bronzed lines of 
it which I witnessed a little while ago.” 

“Have you seen Wilfrid since lunch?” 

“Yes; he talks very sensibly. He beckoned me 
to his bunk-side to whisper that Cutbill made him 
laugh. Anything to divert the dear fellow’s mind. 
I presume you have seen nothing of Lady 
Monson?” 

“Nothing,” she answered, fanning her pale face 
till the yellow hair upon her brow danced as 
though some invisible hand was showering gold 
dust upon her. 

“Jacob Crimp,” said I softly, “is of opinion that 


44 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


he could drive Wilfrid on deck by blacking his 
face, looking in upon him through his open port¬ 
hole, and calling himself the devil.” 

“He need not black his face,” said she, with the 
first smile that I had seen upon her lip that day, 
“but if he does anything of the sort I hope he will 
be treated as Muffin was.” 

“Yet I am of opinion,” said I, “that a great fright 
would impel Wilfrid to make for the door. He 
would pass through it of course, and then his 
hallucination would fall from him.” 

She shook her head. “You must not allow him 
to be frightened, Mr. Monson.” 

“Depend upon it I shan’t,” I replied. “I merely 
repeat a sour seaman’s rude and homely prescrip¬ 
tion.” 

As I spoke the yacht slightly rolled, and simul¬ 
taneously with the movement, as it seemed, one 
felt the dead atmosphere of the cabin set in motion. 

“Good!” I cried, “’tis the first of the change. 
Now heave to it, my beauty!” 

Again the yacht softly dipped her side. I 
jumped up to look at the tell-tale compass, and as 
I did so the skylight glanced to a pale glare as of 
sheet lightning. I waited a minute to mark the roll¬ 
ing of the craft that was now dipping sluggishly but 
steadfastly with rhythmic regularity on undulations 
which were still exceedingly weak, and found the 
set of the suddenly risen swell to be north as near 
as I could judge. 

“Well, Miss Laura,” said I, “I think now we may 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


45 


calculate upon a breeze of wind, presently, from 
a right quarter, too.” 

I looked at the hour; it was twenty minutes to 
eight. The death-like hush was broken; the preter¬ 
natural repose of the last day and night gone. 
Once more you heard the old familiar straining 
sounds, the click of hooked doors, the feeble grind¬ 
ing of bulkheads, with the muffled gurgling of 
water outside mingled with the frequent flap of can¬ 
vas ; but I could be sure that there was no breath of 
air as yet; not the least noise of rippling flowed 
to the ear, and the yacht still lay broadside on to 
her course. 

“Let us go on deck,” said I. 

She sent her maid, who was passing at the mo¬ 
ment, for her hat, and we left the cabin. 

“Hillo!” I cried as I emerged from the compan¬ 
ion, holding her hand that lay almost as cold in 
mine as if it were formed of the snow which it re¬ 
sembled, “there’s another of your friends up there, 
Miss Laura,” and I pointed to the topgallant yard¬ 
arm, upon which was floating a corposant, ghastly 
of hue but beautiful in brilliance. 

She looked up and spoke as though she shud¬ 
dered. “Those things frighten me. What can be 
more ghostly than a light that is kindled as that 
is? Oh, Mr. Monson, what a wild flash of light¬ 
ning!” 

A wild flash it was, though as far off as the hori¬ 
zon. Indeed it was more than one stroke: a copper- 
coloured blaze that seemed to fill the heavens be- 


46 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


hind the clouds with fire, against which incandes¬ 
cent background the sky-line of the long roll of 
vapour stood out in vast billows black as pitch, 
whilst from the heart of the mass there fell a light 
like a fireball, to which the sea there leapt out yel¬ 
low as molten gold. 

I strained my ear. “No thunder as yet,” said I. 
“I hope it is not going to prove a mere electric 
storm, flames and detonations and an up and down 
cataract of rain breathless in its passage with a 
deader calm yet to follow.” 

All at once the light at the topgallant yardarm 
vanished, a soft air blew, and there arose from 
alongside a delicate, small, fairy-like noise of the 
lipping and sipping of ripples. 

“Oh, how heavenly is this wind!” exclaimed 
Miss Laura, reviving on a sudden like a gas-dried 
flower in a shower of rain; “it brings my spirits 
back to me.” 

“Trim sail the watch!” bawled Crimp. But 
there was little to trim; all day long the yacht had 
lain partially stripped. No good, Finn had said, 
in exposing canvas to mere deadness. She wheeled 
slowly to the control of her helm, bowing tenderly 
upon the swell that was now running steadily with 
an almost imperceptible gathering of weight-in its 
folds, and presently she was crawling along with 
her head pointing north before the weak fanning, 
with the lightning astern of her making her can¬ 
vas come and go upon the darkness as though lan¬ 
terns green and rose-bright were being flashed from 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


47 


the deck upon the cloths. The sea was pale with 
fire round about us. Indeed the air was so charged 
with electricity that I felt the tingling of it in the 
skin of my head as though it were in contact with 
some galvanic appliance, and I recollect pulling 
off my cap whilst I asked Miss Laura if she could 
see any sparks darting out of my hair. The sky¬ 
light, gratings, whatever one could sit upon, 
streamed with dew. I called to the steward for a 
couple of camp-stools and placed them so as to ob¬ 
tain the full benefit of the draught feebly breezing 
down out of the swinging space of the mainsail. 
The air was hot, and under the high sun it would 
doubtless have blown with a parching bite that 
must have rendered it even less endurable than the 
motionless atmosphere of the calm; but the dew 
moistened it now; it was a damp night air, with a 
smell of rain behind it besides, and the gushing of 
it upon the face was inexpressibly delicious and 
refreshing. 

“We are but little better than insects,” said Miss 
Laura; “entirely the children of the weather.” 

“Rather compare us to birds,” said I; “I don’t 
like insects.” 

“You complained of feeling depressed just now, 
Mr. Monson. Are you better?” 

“I am the better for this air, certainly,” said I, 
“but I don’t feel particularly cheerful. I shouldn’t 
care to go to a pantomime, for instance, nor should 
I much enjoy a dance. What is it? The influence 
of that heap of electricity out yonder, I suppose,” I 


48 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


added, looking at the dense black massed-up line 
of cloud astern, over all parts of which there was 
an incessant play of lightning, with copperish 
glances behind that gave a lining of fire to the 
edges of the higher reaches of the vast coast of 
vapour. It was like watching some gigantic hang¬ 
ings of tapestry wrought in flame. The imagina¬ 
tion rather than the eye witnessed a hundred fan¬ 
tastic representations—heads of horses, helmets, 
profiles of titanic human faces, banners and 
feathers, and I know not what besides. It was very 
dark overhead and past the bows; the thickness that 
had been upon the sky all day was still there; not 
the leanest phantom of star showed, and the stoop 
of the heavens seemed the nearer and the blacker 
for the flashings over our taffrail, and for the pale 
phosphoric sheets which went wavering on all sides 
towards the murkiness of the horizon. 

I spied Finn conversing with Crimp at the gang¬ 
way; the lightning astern was as moonlight some¬ 
times, and I could see both men looking aloft and 
at the weather in the south and consulting seri¬ 
ously. After a few minutes they walked slowly 
our way. 

“What is it to be, Finn?” said I. 

“Well, sir,” he answered, “this here swell that’s 
slowly a-gathering means wind. It will be but little 
more, though, than an electric squall, I think—a 
deal of fire and hissing and a burst of breeze, and 
then quietness again with the black smother spitting 
itself out ahead. The barometer don’t seem to give 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 49 

more caution than that anyway, sir. But there’s 
never no trusting what we can’t see through.” 

He turned to Crimp. “Better take the main¬ 
sail off her, Jacob,” said he, “and let her slide 
along under her foresail till we see what all that 
there yonder signifies.” 

The order was given; the sailors tumbled aft; the 
great stretch of glimmering, ashen cloths, burning 
and blackening alternately as they reflected the 
tempestuous flares withered upon the dusk as the 
peak and throat halliards were settled away; the 
sail was furled, the huge mainboom secured, and 
the watch went forward softly as cats upon their 
naked feet. 

Ha! what is that? Right ahead, on a line with 
our bowsprit, there leapt from the black breast of 
the sea, on the very edge of the ocean, if not past 
it, a body of flame, brilliant as sunshine but of the 
hue of pale blood. It came and went, but whilst 
it lived it made a ghastly and terrifying daylight 
of the heavens and the water in the north, revealing 
the line of the horizon as though the sun’s upper 
limb were on a level with it till the circle of the 
sea could have been followed to either quarter. 

“That was not lightning,” cried Miss Laura in a 
voice of alarm. 

“Finn,” I shouted, “did you see that?” 

“Ay, sir,” he cried with an accent of astonish¬ 
ment from the opposite side of the deck. 

“What in the name of thunder was it, think 
you?” I inquired. 


50 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


“Looked to me like a cloud of fire dropped clean 
out of the sky, sir,” he answered. 

“No, no,” exclaimed the hoarse voice of the 
fellow who grasped the helm, “my eye was on it, 
capt’n. It rose up.” 

“Listen,” cried I, “if any report follows it.” 

But we could hear no sound save the distant mut¬ 
tering of thunder astern. 

“It looked as though a ship had blown up,” said 
Miss Laura. 

“I say, captain,” I called, “d’ye think it likely 
that a vessel has exploded down there?” 

“There’s been nothen in sight, sir,” he answered. 

“And why? Because the atmosphere has been 
blind all day,” I replied. “You’d see the light of 
an explosion when the craft herself would be 
hidden.” 

“Twam’t no ship, sir,” muttered the fellow at the 
wheel, considering himself licensed by the excite¬ 
ment of the moment to deliver his opinion. “I once 
see the like of such a flare as that off the Maldives.” 

“What was it?” inquired Miss Laura. 

“A sea-quake, miss.” 

“Ha!” I exclaimed, “that’ll be it, Finn.” 

We fell silent, all of us gazing intently ahead, 
never knowing but that another wild light would 
show that way at any moment. Though I was will¬ 
ing enough to believe it to have been a volcanic up¬ 
heaval of flame, I had still a fancy that it might 
be an explosion on board a ship too, some big 
craft that had been out of sight all day in the 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


51 


thickness; and I kept my eyes fixed upon the hori¬ 
zon in that quarter with a half-formed fancy in me 
of witnessing something there by the light of some 
stronger flash than the rest out of the stalking and 
lifting blackness astern of us. 

“I cannot help thinking,” said Miss Laura, rising 
as she spoke, and arching her fingers above her 
eyes to peer through the hollow of her hands, “that 
I sometimes see a pale, steam-like column resem¬ 
bling ascending smoke that spreads out on top in 
the form of a palm tree. Now I see it!” she cried, 
as a brilliant flash behind us sent its ghastly yellow 
into the far confines ahead, till the whole ocean 
lifted dark and flat to it. 

The thunder began to rattle ominously, the light 
breeze faltered, and the foresail swung sulkily to 
the bowing of the vessel upon the swell that was 
distinctly increasing in weight. We all looked, but 
none of us could distinguish anything resembling 
the appearance the girl indicated. 

“If the flame rose from the sea,” said I, “it is 
tolerably certain to have sent up a great body of 
steam. That is, no doubt, what you see, Miss 
Jennings.” 

“It lingers,” she exclaimed, continuing to stare. 

“The draught’s a-taking off,” rumbled Finn. 
“Stand by for a neat little shower.” 

As the air died away it grew stiflingly hot again, 
hotter, it seemed, than it was before the breeze blew. 
The huge volumes of dense shadows astern were 
literally raining lightning; the swell ran in molten 


52 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


glass, and the still comparatively subdued roar of 
the thunder came rolling along those sweeping, 
polished brows as though the ocean were an echo¬ 
ing floor and there were a body of giants away 
down where the lightning was sending colossal 
bowls at us. 

All at once, and in a manner to drive the breath 
out of one’s body with the suddenness and astonish¬ 
ment of it, the yacht’s bows rose to a huge roller 
that came rushing at her from right ahead. Up she 
soared till I dare say she showed twenty foot of 
her keel forward out of water. The vast liquid 
mass swept past the sides with a roar that drowned 
the cannonading of the heavens. Down flashed the 
vessel’s bows whilst her stern stood up as though 
she were making her last plunge. I grasped Laura 
by the waist, clipping hold of a backstay just in 
time to save us both from being dashed on the deck. 
Finn staggered and was thrown. Out of the ob¬ 
scurity in the fore part of the schooner rose a wild, 
hoarse cry of dismay and confusion mingled with 
the din of crockery tumbling and breaking below, 
and the grinding sound of movable objects sliding 
from their places. Heaven and earth, what is it? 
Another! Not so mountainous this time, but a 
terribly heavy roller nevertheless. Up rose the 
yacht again to it, then down fell her stern with a 
boiling of white waters about her bow, amid the 
seething of which and the thunder of the liquid 
volume rushing from off our counter you heard a 
second cry, or rather groan of amazement and 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 53 

alarm, from the sailors forward, with more dis¬ 
tracting noises below. 

I continued to grip Laura and to hold firmly to 
the backstay with my wits almost scattered by the 
incredible violence of the yacht’s soaring and 
plunging, and by the utter unexpectedness of the 
swift, brief, headlong dance. Rut now the yacht 
floated on a level keel again and continued so to 
float, the calm being as dead as ever it had been in 
the most stagnant hour of the day, saving always 
the southerly undulation which the two gigantic 
rollers had temporarily flattened out, though the 
heaving presently began again. I saw Finn rubbing 
his nose like a dazed man as he stood staring 
towards the lightning. 

“What could it have been?” cried Laura. 

“Two volcanic seas, mum,” answered the fellow 
who grasped the wheel; “there’s most times three. 
Capt’n, beg pardon, sir, but that’ll ha’ been a 
mighty bust up yonder to have raised a weight of 
rollers to be felt as them two was all this distance 
away.” 

“The most surprising thing that ever happened 
to me, Mr. Monson,” cried Finn, still bewildered. 

A great drop of rain—a drop do I call it? it 
seemed as big as a hen’s egg—splashed upon my 
face, and at the same moment a flash of lightning 
swept an effulgence as of noontide into heaven and 
ocean, followed rapidly by an ear-splitting burst of 
thunder. 

“Finn’s little shower is beginning,” said I, grasp- 


54 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


ing Laura’s hand; “let us take shelter. Anyway 
the wet should cool the atmosphere if no wind fol¬ 
lows. Bless me! how disgusting if it’s to prove 
merely a thunderstorm.” 

I conducted her to the cabin. At the foot of the 
companion steps stood Lady Monson. She was 
without a hat, her face was of a deadly white, her 
large black eyes glowed with terror, her hair was 
roughly adjusted on her head, and long raven-hued 
tresses of it lay upon her shoulder and hung down 
her back. I could well believe that the old lord 
whom Laura had met at my cousin’s found some¬ 
thing in this woman’s tragic airs and stately person 
to remind him strongly of Mrs. Siddons as Lady 
Macbeth. 

“What has happened?” she exclaimed, address¬ 
ing me without noticing her sister. I explained. 
“Are we in danger?” she exclaimed, with an im¬ 
perious sweep of her fiery eyes over my figure as 
though she could not constrain herself to the con¬ 
descension of looking me full in the face. 

“I believe not,” said I coldly, making as though 
to pass on, for I abhorred her manner and was 
shocked by her treatment of her sister. 

She stood a moment looking up; but there came 
just then a fierce flash of lightning; she covered 
her eyes; at the same moment somebody on deck 
closed the companion. She then, without regarding 
us, went to her cabin. 

Hardly had we seated ourselves when down 
plumped the rain. It seemed to roll over the edge 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


55 


of the cloud like the falls of Niagara, in a vast, 
unbroken sheet of water. There was as much hail 
as rain; the stones of the bigness you find only in 
the tropics, where there is plenty of lightning to 
manufacture them, and the sound of the downrush 
as it struck the deck and set the sea boiling was so 
deafening that, though the thunder was roaring 
almost overhead, nothing was to be heard of it. 
The lightning was horribly brilliant, and the cabin 
seemed filled with the sulphur-smelling blazes, 
though there was only a comparatively small sky¬ 
light for them to show through. In a few minutes 
the rush of rain slackened, the volleying claps and 
rolling peals of thunder were to be heard again, 
with a noise, in the intervals, of the gushing of 
water overboard from our filled decks. 

“I hope the lightning will not strike the yacht,” 
exclaimed Laura. 

“There is no safer place in a thunderstorm than 
a vessel in the middle of the wide ocean,” I 
answered. 

At that moment the burly form of Cutbill came 
out of Wilfrid’s cabin. His head dodged to right 
and left awhile in the corridor whilst he sought to 
make out who we were; then distinguishing us he 
approached. 

“Beg pardon, sir,” he exclaimed, “but his 
honour’s growed very crazy, and wants to know 
what was the cause of the yacht pitching so heavily 
just now.” 

“I will go to his berth and explain,” said I. 


56 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


“Oh, Mr. Monson, please don’t leave me,” cried 
Laura. “The lightning terrifies me.” 

“Then Cutbill,” said I, “give my love to Sir 
Wilfrid and tell him that the pitching of the yacht 
was to a couple of seas caused, as we suppose, by a 
submarine earthquake away down in the north, 
probably fifteen miles distant.” 

“Thought as much, sir,” said Cutbill, from whose 
face the perspiration was streaming, whilst his im¬ 
mense whiskers sparkled like a dew-laden bramble- 
bush in sunrise. 

“Also explain that I do not desire to leave Miss 
Jennings until this deafening and blinding business 
is over. I shall hope to carry my pipe to his 
berth by-and-by. But it must be very hot for you, 
Cutbill, in that cabin?” 

“Melting, sir. I feel to be a-draining away. 
Reckon there’ll be nothen left of me but my clothes 
if this here lasts.” 

“How is Sir Wilfrid?” 

“Well, sir, to be honest, I don’t at all like what I 
see in him. There’s come a sing’ler alteration 
in him. Can’t ’xactly describe it, sir; sort of 
stillness, and a queer whiteness of face, and a 
constant watching of me; his eyes are never off me, 
indeed. The heat’ll have a deal to do with it, I 
dessay.” 

“Some change may be at hand,” said I, “from 
which he may emerge with his miserable hallucina¬ 
tions gone. Yet the heat should account for a deal 
too. Give him my message, Cutbill.” 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


57 


The man knuckled his forehead and withdrew. 
The heat was so great owing to the companion hatch 
and skylight being closed, that my sweet companion 
seemed half-dead with it, and leaned against me 
with her eyes closed, almost in a swoon. But the 
worst of the storm was over apparently, for the 
rain had ceased, and though the lightning was still 
intensely vivid, one knew by the sound of the 
thunder that what was fiercest had forged ahead of 
us and was settling away into the north. I called to 
the steward to open the companion doors and report 
the state of the weather. The moment the hatch 
lay clear to the night I felt a gush of refreshing 
and rain-sweetened air. Laura sat upright and 
gave a deep sigh. 

“Does it rain, steward?” I sung out. 

“No, sir.” 

“Tell Captain Finn,” said I, “to get some space 
of deck swabbed dry for Miss Jennings. The heat 
here is too much for the young lady.” 

In a few moments I heard the slapping of several 
swabs and Finn’s long face glimmered through the 
open skylight. “The weather’s a-clearing, sir,” 
he called down. “There’s a nice little air a-blow- 
ing. The lady’ll find the port side of the quarter¬ 
deck comfortable now.” 

I conducted the girl up the ladder, but she kept 
her hand in my arm. Her manner had something 
of clinging in it, not wholly due to fear either. It 
was, in fact, as though she was influenced by an 
overpowering sense of loneliness, easy to under- 


58 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


stand when one thought of Wilfrid lying mad in his 
cabin and her sister shunning her with hate and 
rage. 

What Finn meant by saying the weather was 
clearing I could not quite understand. It was pitch 
black to windward, that is to say, right over the 
stern, whence there was a small breeze blowing in 
faint, fitful, weak gusts as though irresolute. The 
thunderstorm was ahead and its rage seemed spent, 
for the lightning was no longer plentiful or bril¬ 
liant and the thunder had faded into a sullen mut¬ 
tering. A lantern or two had been brought up from 
below by whose feeble lustre you witnessed the 
shadowy forms of seamen swabbing the decks or 
squeezing the water with scrubbing-brushes into 
the scuppers. The dark swell ran regularly and 
with power from the south, but there was nothing to 
be seen of it saving here and there the glittering 
of green sea fire upon some running brow to let 
you guess how tall it was. I went aft with Laura 
and looked over; the wake was a mere dim, glis¬ 
tening, crawling, dying out after a few fathoms. 
Indeed, the yacht had but the foresail on her with 
a headsail or two, and she seemed to owe what 
small way she was making more to the heave of 
the swell than to the light breeze. The darkness 
was a wonderful jumble of shadows. I never 
remember the like of such confusion of inky 
dyes. The obscurity resembled an atmosphere of 
smoke denser in one place than another, a little 
thin yonder, then just over the mastheads to a 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 59 

stooping belly of soot, elsewhere a sort of faint¬ 
ness merging into impenetrable darkness. 

“Lay aft and loose the mains’l,” rattled out 
Finn. “Double reef and then set it.” 

The breeze now began to freshen; the watch came 
running on to the quarter-deck, and presently the 
wan space of double-reefed canvas slowly mounted. 

“I wish it would brighten a bit astern,” said I; 
“no wolf’s throat could be blacker. There’ll be 
more than a capful of wind there, but it will blow 
the right way for us, so let it come.” 

“I feel,” said Laura, “as though I had recovered 
perfect health after a dreadful illness.” 

“Now she walks,” cried Finn, approaching where 
we stood to peer over the side; “blow, my sweet 
breeze. By the nose on my face, Mr. Monson, I 
smell a strong wind a-coming.” 

It did not need the faculty of smell to hit the 
truth. The breeze was freshening as if by magic. 
A little sea was already running and the yeasty 
flashing of breaking heads spread far into the 
gloom. A loud noise of torn and simmering waters 
came from the bows and a white race of foam was 
speeding arrowlike from under the counter. 

“There is my sister,” whispered Laura. 

I instantly spied the tall figure of Lady Monson 
standing on the top step of the companion ladder 
taking in the deep refreshment of the wind. She 
stepped on to the deck, approached, saw us, and 
crossed to the other side. She called to Captain 
Finn. 


60 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


“Yes, my lady.” 

“A chair, if you please. I will sit here.” 

A seat was procured from the cabin and placed 
for her abreast of the wheel close against the bul¬ 
warks. This time Laura was not to be driven below 
by the presence of her sister. The heat in the cabin 
outweighed her sensitiveness, and then again there 
was the darkness of the night which sundered the 
sides of the deck as effectually as if each had been 
as far off as the horizon. Yet for all that, the sort 
of fear in which she held Lady Monson subdued 
her now through the mere sense of the woman 
being near, scarce visible as she was, just a shadow 
against the bulwarks. I had to bend my ear to 
catch her voice through the hissing of the wind 
aloft and the singing and the seething of the foam 
alongside, so low was her utterance. We sat to¬ 
gether right aft against the grating on the port 
side. The helmsman stood near with his eyes on 
the illuminated compass bowl, the reflection of 
which touched him as with a lining of phosphor 
and exposed a kind of gilded outline of his figure 
against the blackness as he stood swinging upon 
the wheel with a twirl of it now and again to left 
or to right as the vessel’s course on the compass 
card floated to port or starboard of the lubber’s 
mark. Though it was Finn’s watch below he kept 
the deck with Crimp, rendered uneasy by the thun¬ 
der-black look of the night, along with the fresh¬ 
ening wind and the lift of seas leaping with a 
foul-weather snappishness off the ebony slopes of 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


61 


the swell that had grown somewhat heavy and hol¬ 
low. I could just distinguish the dark forms of 
the two men pacing the deck abreast of the gang¬ 
way. The main sheet was well eased off, the great 
boom swung fairly over the quarter, and there was 
a note of howling in the roaring of the wind, as 
it swept with increasing power into the glimmering 
ashen hollow of the reefed canvas and rushed away 
out from under the foot of it. There was no more 
lightning; the sea with its glancings of foam went 
black as ink to the ink of the heavens. There was 
no star, no break of faintness on high. The yacht 
flashed through the mighty shadow, whitening a 
long narrow furrow behind her, and helped by 
every dusky fold that drove roaring to her counter. 

On a sudden there arose a loud and fearful cry 
forward. 

“Breakers ahead!” 

The hoarse voice rang aft sheer through the 
shrill volume of the wind strong as a trumpet-note 
with the astonishment and fear in it. 

Finn went to the side to look over, whilst I heard 
him roar out to Crimp, “Breakers in his eye. The 
nearest land’s a thousand miles off.” 

I jumped up and thrust my head over the rail 
and saw, sure enough, startlingly close ahead a 
throbbing white line that, let it be what else it 
might, bore an amazing resemblance to the boiling 
of surf at the base of a cliff. There was nothing 
else to be seen; the pallid streak stretched some 
distance to right and left. “It’ll be a tide rip, sir!” 


62 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


shouted Finn to me, and his figure melted into the 
obscurity as he went forward to view the appear¬ 
ance from the forecastle. 

I continued peering. “No, it is breakers by 
heaven!” I cried with a wild leap of my heart into 
my very throat to the dull thunderous warring note 
I had caught during an instant’s lull in the sweep of 
the wind past my ear. 

Laura came to my side; we strained our eyes 
together. 

“Breakers, my God!” I cried again, “we shall be 
into them in a minute.” 

Then out of the blackness of the forecastle there 
came from Finn, though ’twas hard to recognize his 
voice, a fierce, half-shrieking cry: “Hard a star¬ 
board! Hard a starboard!” 

I rushed to the wheel to assist the man in putting 
it hard over. At that instant the yacht struck! In 
a breath the scene became a hellish commotion of 
white waters leaping and bursting fiercely along¬ 
side, of yells and cries from the men, of screams 
from Lady Monson, of the grinding and splintering 
of wood, the cracking of spars, the furious beating 
of canvas. I felt the hull lifted under my feet with 
a brief sensation of hurling, then crash! she struck 
again. The shock threw me on my back; though I 
was half-stunned I can distinctly recollect hearing 
the ear-splitting, soul-subduing noise of the fall of 
the mainmast, that broke midway its height and 
fell with all its gear and weight of canvas like a 
thunderbolt from the heavens on the port side of 


W. CLARK RUSSELL 


63 


the vessel, shattering whole fathoms of bulwark. 
I sprang to my feet; Laura had me by the arm 
when I fell and she still clung to me. There was a 
life-buoy close beside us; it hung by a laniard to a 
peg. I whipped it off and got it over Laura’s head 
and under her arms, and the next thing I remem¬ 
ber is dragging her towards the forecastle, where I 
conceived our best chance would lie. 

What had we struck? There was no land here¬ 
abouts. If we had not run foul of the hulk of some 
huge derelict buried from the sight in the black¬ 
ness and revealing nothing but the foam of the 
seas beating against it, then we must have been 
caught by a second volcanic upheaval into whose 
fury we had rushed whilst the devilish agitation 
was in full play. So I thought, and so I remember 
thinking; but that even a rational reflection could 
have entered my mind at such a time, that my 
brain should have retained the power of keeping 
its wits in the least degree collected, I cannot but 
regard as a miracle, when I look back out of this 
calm mood into the distraction and horror and death 
of that hideous night. The seas were breaking in 
thunder shocks over the vessel; the wind was hoary 
with flying clouds of froth. In a few instants the 
Bride had become a complete wreck aloft. Upon 
whatever it was that she had struck she was rapidly 
pounding herself into staves, and the horrible work 
was being expedited outside her by the blows of 
the wreckage of spars which the seas poised and 
hurled at her with the weight and rage of battering- 


64 


A TERRIBLE NIGHT 


rams. The decks were yawning and splitting 
under foot; every white curl of sea flung inboard 
black fragments of the hull. There is nothing in 
language to express the uproar, the cries and 
groans and screams of men maimed and mutilated 
by the fall of the spars or drowning alongside. I 
thought of Wilfrid; but the life of the girl who was 
clinging to me was dearer to my heart than his or 
my own. I could hear Lady Monson screaming 
somewhere forward as I dragged Laura towards 
the forecastle. Sailors rushed against me, and I 
was twice felled in measuring twenty paces. The 
agony of the time gave me the strength of half-a- 
dozen men; the girl was paralysed, and I snatched 
her up in my arms and drove forward staggering 
and reeling, blinded with the flying wet, half- 
drowned by the incessant play of seas over the 
side, feeling the fabric crumbling under my feet 
as you feel sand yielding under you as the tide 
crawls upon it. I knew not what I was about nor 
what I aimed at doing. I believe I was influenced by 
the notion that, since the yacht had struck bow on, 
her forecastle would form the safest part of her, 
as lying closest to whatever it was that she had 
run foul of. I recollect that as I approached the 
fore rigging, stumbling blindly with the girl in my 
arms, a huge black sea swept over the forward 
part of the wreck and swept the galley away with 
it as though it had been a house of cards. The 
rush of water floated me off my legs; I fell and let 
go of Laura. Half-suffocated I was yet in the 



“ I ... DROVE FORWARD STAGGERING 
AND REELING” 











W. CLARK RUSSELL 


65 


act of rising to grope afresh for her when another 
sea rolled over the rail and I felt myself sweeping 
overboard with the velocity that a man falling from 
the edge of a cliff might be sensible of! 

What followed is too dream-like for me to deter¬ 
mine. Some small piece of floating spar I know 
I caught hold of, and that is what I best and per¬ 
haps only remember of that passage of mortal 
anguish. 


THE TORTURE BY HOPE 

VILLIERS DE L’ISLE ADAM 

Many years ago, as evening was closing in, the 
venerable Pedro Arbuez d’Espila, sixth prior of 
the Dominicans of Segovia, and third Grand 
Inquisitor of Spain, followed by a fra redemptor , 
and preceded by two familiars of the Holy Office, 
the latter carrying lanterns, made their way to a 
subterranean dungeon. The bolt of a massive door 
creaked, and they entered a mephitic in-pace, 
where the dim light revealed between rings fastened 
to the wall a bloodstained rack, a brazier, and a 
jug. On a pile of straw, loaded with fetters and 
his neck encircled by an iron carcan, sat a hag¬ 
gard man, of uncertain age, clothed in rags. 

This prisoner was no other than Rabbi Aser 
Abarbanel, a Jew of Arragon, who—accused of 
usury and pitiless scorn for the poor—had been 
daily subjected to torture for more than a year. 
Yet “his blindness was as dense as his hide,” and 
he had refused to abjure his faith. 

Proud of a filiation dating back thousands of 
years, proud of his ancestors—for all Jews worthy 
of the name are vain of their blood—he descended 
Talmudically from Othoniel and consequently from 
Ipsiboa, the wife of the last judge of Israel, a 
circumstance which had sustained his courage amid 


VILLIERS DE LTSLE ADAM 


67 


incessant torture. With tears in his eyes at the 
thought of this resolute soul rejecting salvation, 
the venerable Pedro Arbuez d’Espila, approaching 
the shuddering rabbi, addressed him as follows: 

“My son, rejoice: your trials here below are 
about to end. If in the presence of such obstinacy 
I was forced to permit, with deep regret, the use of 
great severity, my task of fraternal correction has 
its limits. You are the fig tree which, having 
failed so many times to bear fruit, at last withered, 
but God alone can judge your soul. Perhaps 
Infinite Mercy will shine upon you at the last 
moment! We must hope so. There are examples. 
So sleep in peace tonight. Tomorrow you will be 
included in the auto da fe: that is, you will be 
exposed to the quemadero, the symbolical flames 
of the Everlasting Fire: it bums, as you know, only 
at a distance, my son; and Death is at least two 
hours (often three) in coming, on account of the 
wet, iced bandages, with which we protect the heads 
and hearts of the condemned. There will be forty- 
three of you. Placed in the last row, you will have 
time to invoke God and offer to Him this baptism 
of fire, which is of the Holy Spirit. Hope in the 
Light, and rest.” 

With these words, having signed to his com¬ 
panions to unchain the prisoner, the prior tenderly 
embraced him. Then came the turn of the fra 
redemptor, who, in a low tone, entreated the Jew’s 
forgiveness for what he had made him suffer for 
the purpose of redeeming him; then the two 


68 


THE TORTURE BY HOPE 


familiars silently kissed him. This ceremony over, 
the captive was left, solitary and bewildered, in 
the darkness. 

Rabbi Aser Abarbanel, with parched lips and 
visage worn by suffering, at first gazed at the closed 
door with vacant eyes. Closed? The word uncon¬ 
sciously roused a vague fancy in his mind, the 
fancy that he had seen for an instant the light of 
the lanterns through a chink between the door and 
the wall. A morbid idea of hope, due to the 
weakness of his brain, stirred his whole being. He 
dragged himself toward the strange appearance . 
Then, very gently and cautiously, slipping one 
finger into the crevice, he drew the door toward 
him. Marvelous! By an extraordinary accident 
the familiar who closed it had turned the huge key 
an instant before it struck the stone casing, so that 
the rusty bolt not having entered the hole, the door 
again rolled on its hinges. 

The rabbi ventured to glance outside. By the 
aid of a sort of luminous dusk he distinguished 
at first a semicircle of walls indented by winding 
stairs; and opposite to him, at the top of five or 
six stone steps, a sort of black portal, opening into 
an immense corridor, whose first arches only were 
visible from below. 

Stretching himself fiat he crept to the threshold. 
Yes, it was really a corridor, but endless in length. 
A wan light illumined it: lamps suspended from 
the vaulted ceiling lightened at intervals the dull 


VILLIERS DE L’ISLE ADAM 


69 


hue of the atmosphere—the distance was veiled in 
shadow. Not a single door appeared in the whole 
extent! Only on one side, the left, heavily grated 
loopholes, sunk in the walls, admitted a light which 
must be that of evening, for crimson bars at inter¬ 
vals rested on the flags of the pavement. What a 
terrible silence! Yet, yonder, at the far end of 
that passage there might be a doorway of escape! 
The Jew’s vacillating hope was tenacious, for it 
was the last. 

Without hesitating, he ventured on the flags, 
keeping close under the loopholes, trying to make 
himself part of the blackness of the long walls. He 
advanced slowly, dragging himself along on his 
breast, forcing back the cry of pain when some 
raw wound sent a keen pang through his whole 
body. 

Suddenly the sound of a sandaled foot approach¬ 
ing reached his ears. He trembled violently, fear 
stifled him, his sight grew dim. Well, it was over, 
no doubt. He pressed himself into a niche and, 
half lifeless with terror, waited. 

It was a familiar hurrying along. He passed 
swiftly by, holding in his clenched hand an instru¬ 
ment of torture—a frightful figure—and vanished. 
The suspense which the rabbi had endured seemed 
to have suspended the functions of life, and he 
lay nearly an hour unable to move. Fearing an 
increase of tortures if he were captured, he thought 
of returning to his dungeon. But the old hope 
whispered in his soul that divine perhaps , which 


70 


THE TORTURE BY HOPE 


comforts us in our sorest trials. A miracle had 
happened. He could doubt no longer. He began 
to crawl toward the chance of escape. Exhausted 
by suffering and hunger, trembling with pain, he 
pressed onward. The sepulchral corridor seemed 
to lengthen mysteriously, while he, still advancing, 
gazed into the gloom where there must be some 
avenue of escape. 

Oh! oh! He again heard footsteps, but this 
time they were slower, more heavy. The white 
and black forms of two inquisitors appeared, 
emerging from the obscurity beyond. They were 
conversing in low tones, and seemed to be discuss¬ 
ing some important subject, for they were gesticu¬ 
lating vehemently. 

At this spectacle Rabbi Aser Abarbanel closed 
his eyes: his heart beat so violently that it almost 
suffocated him; his rags were damp with the cold 
sweat of agony; he lay motionless by the wall, his 
mouth wide open, under the rays of a lamp, pray¬ 
ing to the God of David. 

Just opposite to him the two inquisitors paused 
under the light of the lamp—doubtless owing to 
some accident due to the course of their argument. 
One, while listening to his companion, gazed at 
the rabbi! And, beneath the look—whose absence 
of expression the hapless man did not at first 
notice—he fancied he again felt the burning pin¬ 
cers scorch his flesh, he was to be once more a 
living wound. Fainting, breathless, with fluttering 
eyelids, he shivered at the touch of the monk’s 



























































































































(• 






VILLIERS DE L’ISLE ADAM 


71 


floating robe. But—strange yet natural fact—the 
inquisitor’s gaze was evidently that of a man deeply 
absorbed in his intended reply, engrossed by what 
he was hearing; his eyes were fixed—and seemed 
to look at the Jew without seeing him. 

In fact, after the lapse of a few minutes, the 
two gloomy figures slowly pursued their way, still 
conversing in low tones, toward the place whence 
the prisoner had come; he had not been seen! 
Amid the horrible confusion of the rabbi’s thoughts, 
the idea darted through his brain: “Can I be 
already dead that they did not see me?” A hideous 
impression roused him from his lethargy: in look¬ 
ing at the wall against which his face was pressed, 
he imagined he beheld two fierce eyes watching 
him! He flung his head back in a sudden frenzy 
of fright, his hair fairly bristling! Yet, no! No. 
His hand groped over the stones: it was the reflec¬ 
tion of the inquisitor’s eyes, still retained in his 
own, which had been refracted from two spots on 
the wall. 

Forward! He must hasten toward that goal 
which he fancied (absurdly, no doubt) to be deliv¬ 
erance, toward the darkness from which he was 
now barely thirty paces distant. He pressed for¬ 
ward faster on his knees, his hands, at full length, 
dragging himself painfully along, and soon entered 
the dark portion of this terrible and appalling 
corridor. 

Suddenly the poor wretch felt a gust of cold 
air on the hands resting upon the flags; it came 


72 THE TORTURE BY HOPE 

from under the little door to which the two walls 
led. 

Oh, Heaven, if that door should open outward! 
Every nerve in the miserable fugitive’s body thrilled 
with hope. He examined it from top to bottom, 
though scarcely able to distinguish its outlines in 
the surrounding darkness. He passed his hand 
over it: no bolt, no lock! A latch! He started 
up, the latch yielded to the pressure of his thumb: 
the door silently swung open before him. 

“Halleluia!” murmured the rabbi in a trans¬ 
port of gratitude as, standing on the threshold, 
he beheld the scene before him. 

The door had opened into the gardens, above 
which arched a starlit sky, into spring, liberty, life! 
It revealed the neighboring fields, stretching to¬ 
ward the sierras, whose sinuous blue lines were 
relieved against the horizon. Yonder lay freedom! 
Oh, to escape! He would journey all night through 
the lemon groves, whose fragrance reached him. 
Once in the mountains and he was safe! He 
inhaled the delicious air; the breeze revived him, 
his lungs expanded! He felt in his swelling heart 
the Veni fords of Lazarus! And to thank once 
more the God who had bestowed this mercy upon 
him, he extended his arms, raising his eyes toward 
Heaven. It was an ecstasy of joy! 

Then he fancied he saw the shadow of his arms 
approach him—fancied that he felt these shadowy 
arms enclose, embrace him—and that he was 


VILLIERS DE L’lSLE ADAM 


73 


pressed tenderly to some one’s breast. A tall 
figure actually did stand directly before him. He 
lowered his eyes—and remained motionless, gasp¬ 
ing for breath, dazed, with fixed eyes, fairly drivel¬ 
ing with terror. 

Horror! He was in the clasp of the Grand 
Inquisitor himself, the venerable Pedro Arbuez 
d’Espila, who gazed at him with tearful eyes, like 
a good shepherd who had found his stray lamb. 

The dark-robed priest pressed the hapless Jew 
to his heart with so fervent an outburst of love, 
that the edges of the monochal haircloth rubbed 
the Dominican’s breast. And while Aser Abar- 
banel with portruding eyes gasped in agony in the 
ascetic’s embrace, vaguely comprehending that all 
the phases of this fatal evening were only a pre¬ 
arranged torture , that of Hope, the Grand Inquisi¬ 
tor, with an accent of touching reproach and a look 
of consternation, murmured in his ear, his breath 
parched and burning from long fasting: 

“What, my son! On the eve, perchance, of 
salvation—you wished to leave us?” 


WHAT WAS IT? 

FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


It is, I confess, with considerable diffidence that 
I approach the strange narrative which I am about 
to relate. The events which I purpose detailing 
are of so extraordinary and unheard-of a character 
that I am quite prepared to meet with an unusual 
amount of incredulity and scorn. I accept all 
such beforehand. I have, I trust, the literary cour¬ 
age to face unbelief. I have, after mature con¬ 
sideration, resolved to narrate, in as simple and 
straightforward a manner as I can compass, some 
facts that passed under my observation in the month 
of July last, and which, in the annals of the mys¬ 
teries of physical science, are wholly unparalleled. 

I live at No.—Twenty-sixth Street, in this city. 
The house is in some respects a curious one. It 
has enjoyed for the last two years the reputation 
of being haunted. It is a large and stately resi¬ 
dence, surrounded by what was once a garden, but 
which is now only a green inclosure used for bleach¬ 
ing clothes. The dry basin of what has been a 
fountain, and a few fruit-trees, ragged and un¬ 
pruned, indicate that this spot, in past days, was 
a pleasant, shady retreat, filled with fruits and 
flowers and the sweet murmur of waters. 

The house is very spacious. A hall of noble 
74 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


75 


size leads to a vast spiral staircase winding through 
its centre; while the various apartments are of 
imposing dimensions. It was built some fifteen 
or twenty years since by Mr. A—, the well-known 
New York merchant, who five years ago threw the 
commercial world into convulsions by a stupen¬ 
dous bank fraud. Mr. A—, as everyone knows, 
escaped to Europe, and died not long after of a 
broken heart. Almost immediately after the news 
of his decease reached this country, and was veri¬ 
fied, the report spread in Twenty-sixth Street that 
No.—was haunted. Legal measures had dispos¬ 
sessed the widow of its former owner, and it was 
inhabited merely by a care-taker and his wife, 
placed there by the house-agent into whose hands 
it had passed for purposes of renting or sale. 
These people declared that they were troubled with 
unnatural noises. Doors were opened without any 
visible agency. The remnants of furniture scat¬ 
tered through the various rooms were, during the 
night, piled one upon the other by unknown hands. 
Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs in 
broad daylight, accompanied by the rustle of un¬ 
seen silk dresses and the gliding of viewless hands 
along the massive balusters. The care-taker and 
his wife declared that they would live there no 
longer. The house-agent laughed, dismissed them 
and put others in their place. The noises and 
supernatural manifestations continued. The neigh¬ 
borhood caught up the story, and the house re¬ 
mained untenanted for three years. Several parties 


76 


WHAT WAS IT? 


negotiated for it; but somehow, always before the 
bargain was closed, they heard the unpleasant 
rumors, and declined to treat any further. 

It was in this state of things that my landlady-— 
who at that time kept a boarding-house in Bleecker 
Street, and who wished to move farther up town— 
conceived the bold idea of renting No.— Twenty 
sixth Street. Happening to have in her house rather 
a plucky and philosophical set of boarders, she laid 
her scheme before us, stating candidly everything 
she had heard respecting the ghostly qualities of 
the establishment to which she wished to remove 
us. With the exception of one or two timid persons 
—a sea-captain and a returned Californian, who 
immediately gave notice that they would leave— 
every one of Mrs. Moffat’s guests declared that 
they would accompany her in her chivalric incur¬ 
sion into the abode of spirits. 

Our removal was effected in the month of May, 
and we were all charmed with our new residence. 
The portion of Twenty-sixth Street where our house 
is situated—between Seventh and Eighth Avenues 
—is one of the pleasantest localities in New York. 
The gardens back of the houses, running down 
nearly to the Hudson, form, in the summer time, 
a perfect avenue of verdure. The air is pure and 
invigorating, sweeping, as it does, straight across 
the river from the Weehawken heights, and even 
the ragged garden which surrounded the house on 
two sides, although displaying on washing-days 
rather too much clothes-line, still gave us a piece 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


77 


of green sward to look at, and a cool retreat in 
the summer evenings, where we smoked our cigars 
in the dusk, and watched the fire-flies flashing their 
dark-lanterns in the long grass. 

Of course we had no sooner established our¬ 
selves at No.—than we began to expect the ghosts. 
We absolutely awaited their advent with eagerness. 
Our dinner conversation was supernatural. One 
of the boarders, who had purchased Mrs. Crowe’s 
“Night Side of Nature” for his own private delecta¬ 
tion, was regarded as a public enemy by the entire 
household for not having bought twenty copies. 
The man led a life of supreme wretchedness while 
he was perusing the volume. A system of espion¬ 
age was established, of which he was the victim. 
If he incautiously laid the book down for an instant 
and left the room, it was immediately seized and 
read aloud in secret places to a select few. I found 
myself a person of immense importance, it having 
leaked out that I was tolerably well versed in the 
history of supernaturalism, and had once written 
a story, entitled “The Pot of Tulips,” for Harper’s 
Monthly, the foundation of which was a ghost. 
If a table or a wainscot panel happened to warp 
when we were assembled in the large drawing¬ 
room, there was an instant silence, and every one 
was prepared for an immediate clanking of chains 
and a spectral form. 

After a month of psychological excitement, it was 
with the utmost dissatisfaction that we were forced 
to acknowledge that nothing in the remotest de- 


78 


WHAT WAS IT? 


gree approaching the supernatural had manifested 
itself. Once the black butler asseverated that his 
candle had been blown out by some invisible agency 
while in the act of undressing himself for the night; 
but as I had more than once discovered this colored 
gentleman in a condition when one candle must 
have appeared to him like two, I thought it possible 
that, by going a step farther in his potations, he 
might have reversed this phenomenon, and seen no 
candle at all where he ought to have beheld one. 

Things were in this state when an incident took 
place so awful and inexplicable in its character 
that my reason fairly reels at the bare memory 
of the occurrence. It was the tenth of July. After 
dinner was over I repaired, with my friend Dr. 
Hammond, to the garden to smoke my evening pipe. 
Independent of certain mental sympathies which 
existed between the Doctor and myself, we were 
linked together by a secret vice. We both smoked 
opium. We knew each other’s secret, and re¬ 
spected it. We enjoyed together that wonderful 
expansion of thought; that marvelous intensifying 
of the perceptive faculties; that boundless feeling 
of existence when we seem to have points of contact 
with the whole universe; in short, that unimagin¬ 
able spiritual bliss, which I would not surrender 
for a throne, and which I hope you, reader, will 
never—never taste. 

Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor 
and I spent together in secret were regulated with 
a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly smoke 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


79 


the drug of Paradise, and leave our dreams to 
chance. While smoking we carefully steered our 
conversation through the brightest and calmest 
channels of thought. We talked of the East, and 
endeavored to recall the magical panorama of its 
glowing scenery. We criticised the most sensuous 
poets, those who painted life ruddy with health, 
brimming with passion, happy in the possession 
of youth, and strength, and beauty. If we talked 
of Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” we 
lingered over Ariel and avoided Caliban. Like 
the Gebers, we turned our faces to the East, and 
saw only the sunny side of the world. 

This skillful coloring of our train of thought 
produced in our subsequent visions a correspond¬ 
ing tone. The splendors of Arabian fairy-land 
dyed our dreams. We paced that narrow strip of 
grass with the tread and port of kings. The song 
of the Rana arborea while he clung to the bark 
of the ragged plum-tree sounded like the strains 
of divine orchestras. Houses, walls, and streets 
melted like rain-clouds, and vistas of unimagin¬ 
able glory stretched away before us. It was a rap¬ 
turous companionship. We each of us enjoyed the 
vast delight more perfectly because, even in our 
most ecstatic moments, we were ever conscious of 
each other’s presence. Our pleasures, while indi¬ 
vidual, were still twin, vibrating and moving in 
musical accord. 

On the evening in question, the tenth of July, 
the Doctor and myself found ourselves in an unusu- 


80 


WHAT WAS IT? 


ally metaphysical mood. We lit our large meers¬ 
chaums, filled with fine Turkish tobacco, in the core 
of which burned a little black nut of opium, that, 
like the nut in the fairy tale, held within its narrow 
limits wonders beyond the reach of kings; we paced 
to and fro, conversing. A strange perversity domi¬ 
nated the currents of our thought. They would 
not flow through the sun-lit channels into which we 
strove to divert them. For some unaccountable rea¬ 
son they constantly diverged into dark and lone¬ 
some beds, where a continual gloom brooded. It 
was in vain that, after our old fashion, we flung 
ourselves on the shores of the East, and talked of 
its gay bazaars, of the splendors of the time of 
Haroun, of harems and golden palaces. Black 
afreets continually arose from the depths of our 
talk, and expanded, like the one the fisherman re¬ 
leased from the copper vessel, until they blotted 
everything bright from our vision. Insensibly we 
yielded to the occult force that swayed us, and 
indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked 
some time upon the proneness of the human mind 
to mysticism and the almost universal love of the 
Terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me: 

“What do you consider to be the greatest element 
of Terror?” 

The question, I own, puzzled me. That many 
things were terrible, I knew. Stumbling over a 
corpse in the dark; beholding, as I once did, a 
woman floating down a deep and rapid river, with 
wildly-lifted arms and awful, upturned face, utter- 












FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


81 


ing, as she sank, shrieks that rent one’s heart, 
while we, the spectators, stood frozen at a window 
which overhung the river at a height of sixty feet, 
unable to make the slightest effort to save her, but 
dumbly watching her last supreme agony and her 
disappearance. A shattered wreck, with no life visi¬ 
ble, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is 
a terrible object, for it suggests a huge terror, the 
proportions of which are veiled. But it now struck 
me for the first time that there must be one great 
and ruling embodiment of fear, a King of Terrors 
to which all others must succumb. What might 
it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe 
its existence? 

“I confess, Hammond,” I replied to my friend, 
“I never considered the subject before. That there 
must be one Something more terrible than any other 
thing, I feel. I can not attempt, however, even the 
most vague definition.” 

“I am somewhat like you, Harry,” he answered. 
“I feel my capacity to experience a terror greater 
than anything yet conceived by the human mind. 
Something combining in fearful and unnatural 
amalgamation hitherto supposed incompatible ele¬ 
ments. The calling of the voices in Brockden 
Brown’s novel of ‘Wieland’ is awful; so is the 
picture of the Dweller of the Threshold in Bulwer’s 
‘Zanoni;’ but,” he added, shaking his head gloom¬ 
ily, “there is something more horrible still than 
these.” 

“Look here, Hammond,” I rejoined; “let us drop 


82 


WHAT WAS IT? 


this kind of talk for Heaven’s sake. We shall 
suffer for it, depend on it.” 

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight,” 
he replied, “but my brain is running upon all sorts 
of weird and awful thoughts. I feel as if I could 
write a story like Hoffman tonight, if I were only 
master of a literary style.” 

“Well, if we are going to be Hoffmanesque in 
our talk I’m off to bed. Opium and nightmares 
should never be brought together. How sultry it 
is! Good-night, Hammond.” 

“Good-night, Harry. Pleasant dreams to you.” 

“To you, gloomy wretch, afreets, ghouls, and 
enchanters.” 

We parted, and each sought his respective cham¬ 
ber. I undressed quickly and got into bed, taking 
with me, according to my usual custom, a book, 
over which I generally read myself to sleep. I 
opened the volume as soon as I had laid my head 
upon the pillow, and instantly flung it to the other 
side of the room. It was Goudon’s “History of 
Monsters”—a curious French work, which I had 
lately imported from Paris, but which, in the state 
of mind I was then in, was anything but an agree¬ 
able companion. I resolved to go to sleep at once; 
so, turning down my gas until nothing but a little 
blue point of light glimmered on the top of the tube, 
I composed myself to rest once more. 

The room was in total darkness. The atom of 
gas that still remained lighted did not illuminate 
a distance of three inches round the burner. I 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


83 


desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if 
to shut out even the darkness, and tried to think of 
nothing. It was in vain. The confounded themes 
touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtrud¬ 
ing themselves on my brain. I battled against 
them. I erected ramparts of would-be blankness 
of intellect to keep them out. They still crowded 
upon me. While I was lying still as a corpse, 
hoping that by a perfect physical inaction I would 
hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred. 
A Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceil¬ 
ing, plumb upon my chest, and the next instant I 
felt two bony hands encircling my throat, endeavor¬ 
ing to choke me. 

I am no coward, and am possessed of consider¬ 
able physical strength. The suddenness of the attack 
instead of stunning me strung every nerve to its 
highest tension. My body acted from instinct, be¬ 
fore my brain had time to realize the terrors of my 
position. In an instant I wound two muscular arms 
around the creature, and squeezed it, with all the 
strength of despair, against my chest. In a few 
seconds the bony hands that had fastened on my 
throat loosened their hold, and I was free to breathe 
once more. Then commenced a struggle of awful 
intensity. Immersed in the most profound dark¬ 
ness, totally ignorant of the nature of the Thing 
by which I was so suddenly attacked, finding my 
grasp slipping every moment by reason, it seemed 
to me, of the entire nakedness of my assailant, bit¬ 
ten with sharp teeth in the shoulder, neck, and chest, 


84 


WHAT WAS IT? 


having every moment to protect my throat against 
a pair of sinewy, agile hands, which my utmost 
efforts could not confine—these were a combination 
of circumstances to combat which required all the 
strength and skill and courage that I possessed. 

At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting strug¬ 
gle, I got my assailant under by a series of incredi¬ 
ble efforts of strength. Once pinned, with my knee 
on what I made out to be its chest, I knew that I 
was victor. I rested for a moment to breathe. I 
heard the creature beneath me panting in the dark¬ 
ness, and felt the violent throbbing of a heart. It 
was apparently as exhausted as I was, that was one 
comfort. At this moment I remembered that I 
usually placed under my pillow, before going to 
bed, a large, yellow silk pocket-handkerchief, for 
use during the night. I felt for it instantly; it was 
there. In a few seconds more I had, after a fash¬ 
ion, pinioned the creature’s arms. 

I now felt tolerably secure. There was nothing 
more to be done but to turn on the gas, and, having 
first seen what my midnight assailant was like, 
arouse the household. I will confess to being actu¬ 
ated by a certain pride in not giving the alarm 
before; I wished to make the capture alone and 
unaided. 

Never loosing my hold for an instant, I slipped 
from the bed to the floor, dragging my captive with 
me. I had but a few steps to make to reach the 
gas-burner; these I made with the greatest caution, 
holding the creature in a grip like a vise. At last 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


85 


I got within arm’s-length of the tiny speck of blue 
light, which told me where the gas-burner lay. 
Quick as lightning I released my grasp with one 
hand and let on the full flood of light. Then I 
turned to look at my captive. 

I can not even attempt to give any definition of 
my sensations the instant after I turned on the gas. 
I suppose I must have shrieked with terror, for in 
less than a minute afterward my room was crowded 
with the inmates of the house. I shudder now as 
I think of that awful moment. I saw nothing! 
Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped round a breath¬ 
ing, panting, corporeal shape, my other hand 
gripped with all its strength a throat as warm, and 
apparently fleshly, as my own; and yet, with this 
living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed 
against my own, and all in the bright glare of a 
large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing! Not 
even an outline—a vapor! 

I do not, even at this hour, realize the situation 
in which I found myself. I can not recall the 
astounding incident thoroughly. Imagination in 
vain tries to compass the awful paradox. 

It breathed. I felt its warm breath upon my 
cheek. It struggled fiercely. It had hands. They 
clutched me. Its skin was smooth, just like my 
own. There it lay, pressed close up against me, 
solid as stone—and yet utterly invisible! 

I wonder that I did not faint or go mad on 
the instant. Some wonderful instinct must have 
sustained me; for, absolutely, in place of loosening 


86 


WHAT WAS IT? 


my hold on the terrible Enigma, I seemed to gain 
an additional strength in my moment of horror, 
and tightened my grasp with such wonderful force 
that I felt the creature shivering with agony. 

Just then Hammond entered my room at the head 
of the household. As soon as he beheld my face 
—which, I suppose, must have been an awful sight 
to look at—he hastened forward, crying, 

“Great Heaven, Harry! what has happened?” 

“Hammond! Hammond!” I cried, “come here. 
Oh! this is awful! I have been attacked in bed by 
something or other, which I have hold of; but I 
can’t see it—I can’t see it!” 

Hammond, doubtless struck by the unfeigned 
horror expressed in my countenance, made one or 
two steps forward with an anxious yet puzzled 
expression. A very audible titter burst from the 
remainder of my visitors. This suppressed laugh¬ 
ter made me furious. To laugh at a human being 
in my position! It was the worst species of cruelty. 
Now, I can understand why the appearance of a 
man struggling violently, as it would seem, with 
an airy nothing, and calling for assistance against 
a vision, should have appeared ludicrous. Then, 
so great was my rage against the mocking crowd 
that had I the power I would have stricken them 
dead where they stood. 

“Hammond! Hammond!” I cried again, des¬ 
pairingly, “for God’s sake come to me. I can hold 
the—the Thing but a short while longer. It is 
overpowering me. Help me. Help me!” 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 87 

“Harry,” whispered Hammond, approaching me, 
“you have been smoking too much opium.” 

“I swear to you, Hammond, that this is no 
vision,” I answered, in the same low tone. “Don’t 
you see how it shakes my whole frame with its 
struggles? If you don’t believe me convince your¬ 
self. Feel it—touch it.” 

Hammond advanced and laid his hand in the 
spot I indicated. A wild cry of horror burst from 
him. He had felt it! 

In a moment he had discovered somewhere in 
my room a long piece of cord, and was the next 
instant winding it, and knotting it about the body 
of the unseen being that I clasped tightly in my 
arms. 

“Harry,” he said, in a hoarse, agitated voice, 
for, though he preserved his presence of mind, 
he was deeply moved, “Harry, it’s all safe now. 
You may let go, old fellow, if you’re tired. The 
Thing can’t move.” 

I was utterly exhausted, and I gladly loosed 
my hold. 

Hammond stood holding the ends of the cord 
that bound the Invisible, twisted round his hand, 
while before him, self-supporting, as it were, he 
beheld a rope laced and interlaced, and stretching 
tightly around a vacant space. I never saw a man 
look so thoroughly stricken with awe. Neverthe¬ 
less his face expressed all the courage and deter¬ 
mination which I knew him to possess. His lips, 
although white, were set firmly, and one could 


88 


WHAT WAS IT? 


perceive at a glance that, although stricken with 
fear, he was not daunted. 

The confusion that ensued among the guests of 
the house, who were witnesses of this extraordinary 
scene between Hammond and myself—who beheld 
the pantomime of binding this struggling Something 
—who beheld me almost sinking from physical 
exhaustion when my task of jailer was over—the 
confusion and terror that took possession of the 
by-standers, when they saw all this, was beyond 
description. Many of the weaker ones fled from 
the apartment. The few who remained behind 
clustered near the door, and could not be induced 
to approach Hammond and his Charge. Still 
incredulity broke out through their terror. They 
had not the courage to satisfy themselves, and yet 
they doubted. It was in vain that I begged of 
some of the men to come near and convince them¬ 
selves by touch of the existence of a living being 
in that room which was invisible. They were in¬ 
credulous, but did not dare to undeceive themselves. 
How could a solid, living, breathing body be invisi¬ 
ble? they asked. My reply was this. I gave a 
sign to Hammond, and both of us—conquering our 
fearful repugnance to touching the invisible crea¬ 
ture—lifted it from the ground, manacled as it was, 
and took it to my bed. Its weight was about that 
of a boy of fourteen. 

“Now my friends,” I said, as Hammond and 
myself held the creature suspended over the bed, 
“I can give you self-evident proof that here is a 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


89 


solid, ponderable body which, nevertheless, you can 
not see. Be good enough to watch the surface of 
the bed attentively.” 

I was astonished at my own courage in treating 
this strange event so calmly; but I had recovered 
from my first terror, and felt a sort of scientific 
pride in the affair which dominated every other 
feeling. 

The eyes of the by-standers were immediately 
fixed on my bed. At a given signal Hammond 
and I let the creature fall. There was the dull 
sound of a heavy body alighting on a soft mass. 
The timbers of the bed creaked. A deep impres¬ 
sion marked itself distinctly on the pillow, and on 
the bed itself. The crowd who witnessed this gave 
a sort of low, universal cry, and rushed from the 
room. Hammond and I were left alone with our 
Mystery. 

We remained silent for some time, listening to 
the low, irregular breathing of the creature on 
the bed, and watching the rustle of the bedclothes 
as it impotently struggled to free itself from con¬ 
finement. Then Hammond spoke. 

“Harry, this is awful.” 

“Ay, awful.” 

“But not unaccountable.” 

“Not unaccountable! What do you mean? Such 
a thing has never occurred since the birth of the 
world. I know not what to think, Hammond. God 
grant that I am not mad, and that this is not an 
insane fantasy!” 


90 


WHAT WAS IT? 


“Let us reason a little, Harry. Here is a solid 
body which we touch, but which we can not see. 
The fact is so unusual that it strikes us with terror. 
Is there no parallel, though, for such a phenome¬ 
non? Take a piece of pure glass. It is tangible 
and transparent. A certain chemical coarseness 
is all that prevents its being so entirely transparent 
as to be totally invisible. It is not theoretically 
impossible , mind you, to fabricate a glass which 
shall not reflect a single ray of light—a glass so 
pure and homogeneous in its atoms that the rays 
from the sun shall pass through it as they do 
through the air, refracted but not reflected. We 
do not see the air, and yet we feel it.” 

“That’s all very well, Hammond, but these are 
inanimate substances. Glass does not breathe, air 
does not breathe. This thing has a heart that palpi¬ 
tates. A will that moves it. Lungs that play and 
inspire and respire.” 

“You forget the strange phenomena of which we 
have so often heard of late,” answered the Doctor, 
gravely. “At the meetings called ‘spirit circles,’ 
invisible hands have been thrust into the hands of 
those persons round the table—warm, fleshly hands 
that seemed to pulsate with mortal life.” 

“What? Do you think, then, that this thing 
is—” 

“I don’t know what it is,” was the solemn reply; 
“but please the gods I will, with your assistance, 
thoroughly investigate it.” 

We watched together, smoking many pipes, all 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


91 


night long by the bedside of the unearthly being 
that tossed and panted until it was apparently 
wearied out. Then we learned by the low, regular 
breathing that it slept. 

The next morning the house was all astir. The 
boarders congregated on the landing outside my 
room, and Hammond and myself were lions. We 
had to answer a thousand questions as to the state 
of our extraordinary prisoner, for as yet not one 
person in the house except ourselves could be 
induced to set foot in the apartment. 

The creature was awake. This was evidenced 
by the convulsive manner in which the bedclothes 
were moved in its efforts to escape. There was 
something truly terrible in beholding, as it were, 
those second-hand indications of the terrible writh- 
ings and agonized struggles for liberty, which them¬ 
selves were invisible. 

Hammond and myself had racked our brains 
during the long night to discover some means by 
which we might realize the shape and general 
appearance of the Enigma. As well as we could 
make out by passing our hands over the creature’s 
form, its outlines and lineaments were human. 
There was a mouth; a round, smooth head with¬ 
out hair; a nose, which, however, was little ele¬ 
vated above the cheeks; and its hands and feet felt 
like those of a boy. At first we thought of placing 
the being on a smooth surface and tracing its outline 
with chalk, as shoemakers trace the outline of the 
foot. This plan was given up as being of no value. 


92 


WHAT WAS IT? 


Such an outline would give not the slightest idea 
of its conformation. 

A happy thought struck me. We would take a 
cast of it in plaster of Paris. This would give us 
the solid figure, and satisfy all our wishes. But 
how to do it? The movements of the creature 
would disturb the setting of the plastic covering, 
and distort the mould. Another thought. Why 
not give it chloroform? It had respiratory organs 
—that was evident by its breathing. Once reduced 
to a state of insensibility, we could do with it what 
we would. Doctor X—was sent for; and after the 
worthy physician had recovered from the first shock 
of amazement, he proceeded to administer the 
chloroform. In three minutes afterward we were 
enabled to remove the fetters from the creature’s 
body, and a well-known modeler of this city was 
busily engaged in covering the invisible form with 
the moist clay. In five minutes more we had a 
mould, and before evening a rough facsimile of 
the Mystery. It was shaped like a man. Distorted, 
uncouth, and horrible, but still a man. It was 
small, not over four feet and some inches in height, 
and its limbs betrayed a muscular development that 
was unparalleled. Its face surpassed in hideous¬ 
ness anything I had ever seen. Gustave Dore, or 
Callot, or Tony Johannot never conceived anything 
so horrible. There is a face in one of the latter’s 
illustrations to “Un voyage ou il vous plaira” 
which somewhat approaches the countenance of 
this creature, but does not equal it. It was the 


FITZ JAMES O’BRIEN 


93 


physiognomy of what I should have fancied a ghoul 
to be. It looked as if it was capable of feeding 
on human flesh. 

Having satisfied our curiosity, and bound every 
one in the house over to secrecy, it became a ques¬ 
tion what was to be done with our Enigma? It 
was impossible that we should keep such a horror 
in our house; it was equally impossible that such 
an awful being should be let loose upon the world. 
I confess that I would have gladly voted for the 
creature’s destruction. But who would shoulder 
the responsibility? Who would undertake the exe¬ 
cution of this horrible semblance of a human 
being? Day after day this question was deliber¬ 
ated gravely. The boarders all left the house. 
Mrs. Moffat was in despair, and threatened Ham¬ 
mond and myself with all sorts of legal penalties 
if we did not remove the Horror. Our answer 
was, “We will go if you like, but we decline taking 
this creature with us. Remove it yourself if you 
please. It appeared in your house. On you the 
responsibility rests.” To this there was, of course, 
no answer. Mrs. Moffat could not obtain for love 
or money a person who would even approach the 
Mystery. 

The most singular part of the transaction was, 
that we were entirely ignorant of what the creature 
habitually fed on. Everything in the way of nutri¬ 
ment that we could think of was placed before it, 
but was never touched. It was awful to stand by, 
day after day, and see the clothes toss and hear 


94 


WHAT WAS IT? 


the hard breathing, and know that it was starving. 

Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and it still 
lived. The pulsations of the heart, however, were 
daily growing fainter, and had now nearly ceased 
altogether. It was evident that the creature was 
dying for want of sustenance. While this terrible 
life-struggle was going on I felt miserable. I could 
not sleep of nights. Horrible as the creature was, 
it was pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering. 

At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold 
and stiff one morning in the bed. The heart had 
ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire. We hastened 
to bury it in the garden. w It was a strange funeral, 
the dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp 

hole. The cast of its form I gave to Doctor X-, 

who keeps it in his museum in Tenth Street. 

As I am on the eve of a long journey from which 
I may not return, I have drawn up this narrative 
of an event the mo’st singular that has ever come to 
my knowledge. 



THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


RUDYARD KIPLING 

Your Gods and my Gods—do you or I know which 
are the stronger?—Native Proverb. 


East of Suez, some hold, the direct control of 
Providence ceases; Man being there handed over 
to the power of the gods and devils of Asia, and 
the Church of England Providence only exercising 
an occasional and modified supervision in the case 
of Englishmen. 

This theory accounts for some of the more un¬ 
necessary horrors of life in India: it may be 
stretched to explain my story. 

My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows 
as much of natives of India as is good for any man, 
can bear witness to the facts of the case. Dumoise, 
our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. 
The inference which he drew from the evidence 
was entirely incorrect. He is dead now; he died 
in a rather curious manner, which has been else¬ 
where described. 

When Fleete came to India he owned a little 
money and some land in the Himalayas, near a 
place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been 
left him by an uncle, and he came out to finance 
them. He was a big, heavy, genial, and inoffensive 
man. His knowledge of natives was, of course, 
95 


96 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


limited, and he complained of the difficulties of 
the language. 

He rode in from his place in the hills to spend 
New Year in the station, and he stayed with Strick¬ 
land. On New Year’s Eve there was a big dinner 
at the club, and the night was excusably wet. When 
men foregather from the uttermost ends of the 
Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The 
Frontier had sent down a contingent o’ Catch-’em- 
Alive-O’s who had not seen twenty white faces for 
a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles to 
dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee 
bullet where their drinks should lie. They profited 
by their new security, for they tried to play pool 
with a curled-up hedge-hog found in the garden, 
and one of them carried the marker round the room 
in his teeth. Half a dozen planters had come in 
from the south and were talking “horse” to the 
Biggest Liar in Asia, who was trying to cap all their 
stories at once. Everybody was there, and there 
was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock 
of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen 
during the past year. It was a very wet night, and 
I remember that we sang “Auld Lang Syne” with 
our feet in the Polo Championship Cup, and our 
heads among the stars, and swore that we were all 
dear friends. Then some of us went away and 
annexed Burma, and some tried to open up the 
Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies in that 
cruel scrub outside Suakim, and some found stars 
and medals, and some were married, which was 


“FLEETE . . . WAS GRAVELY GRINDING THE 
ASHES OF HIS CIGAR-BUTT INTO THE 
FOREHEAD OF THE RED, STONE 
IMAGE OF HANUMAN” 













RUDYARD KIPLING 


97 


bad, and some did other things which were worse, 
and the others of us stayed in our chains and strove 
to make money on insufficient experiences. 

Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, 
drank champagne steadily up to dessert, then raw, 
rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky, took 
Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies 
and sodas to improve his pool strokes, beer and 
bones at half-past two, winding up with old brandy. 
Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three 
in the morning into fourteen degrees of frost, he 
was very angry with his horse for coughing, and 
tried to leap-frog into the saddle. The horse broke 
away and went to his stables; so Strickland and I 
formed a Guard of Dishonor to take Fleete home. 

Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a 
little temple of Hanuman, the Monkey-god, who 
is a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods 
have good points, just as have all priests. Per¬ 
sonally, I attach much importance to Hanuman, 
and am kind to his people—the great grey apes 
of the hills. One never knows when one may want 
a friend. 

There was a light in the temple, and as we 
passed, we could hear the voices of men chanting 
hymns. In a native temple, the priests rise at all 
hours of the night to do honor to their god. Before 
we could stop him, Fleete dashed up the steps, 
patted two priests on the back, and was gravely 
grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the fore¬ 
head of the red, stone image of Hanuman. Strick- 


98 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


land tried to drag him out, but he sat down and 
said solemnly: 

“Shee that? ’Mark of the B—beasht! I made 
it. Ishn’t it fine?” 

In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, 
and Strickland, who knew what came of polluting 
gods, said that things might occur. He, by virtue 
of his official position, long residence in the coun¬ 
try, and weakness for going among the natives, was 
known to the priests and he felt unhappy. Fleete 
sat on the ground and refused to move. He said 
that “good old Hanuman” made a very soft pillow. 

Then, without any warning, a Silver Man came 
out of a recess behind the image of the god. He 
was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold, and 
his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what 
the Bible calls “a leper as white as snow.” Also 
he had no face, because he was a leper of some 
years’ standing, and his disease was heavy upon 
him. We stooped to haul Fleete up, and the temple 
was filling and filling with folk who seemed to 
spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran 
in under our arms, making a noise exactly like 
the mewing of an otter, caught Fleete round the 
body and dropped his head on Fleete’s breast 
before we could wrench him away. Then he retired 
to a corner and sat mewing while the crowd blocked 
all the doors. 

The priests were very angry until the Silver Man 
touched Fleete. That nuzzling seemed to sober 
them. 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


99 


At the end of a few minutes’ silence one of 
the priests came to Strickland and said, in perfect 
English, “Take your friend away. He has done 
with Hanuman, but Hanuman has not done with 
him.” The crowd gave room and we carried Fleete 
into the road. 

Strickland was very angry. He said that we 
might all three have been knifed, and that Fleete 
should thank his stars that he had escaped without 
injury. 

Fleete thanked no one. He said that he wanted 
to go to bed. He was gorgeously drunk. 

We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, 
until Fleete was taken with violent shivering fits 
and sweating. He said that the smells of the bazaar 
were overpowering, and he wondered why slaugh¬ 
ter-houses were permitted so near English resi¬ 
dences. “Can’t you smell the blood?” said Fleete. 

We put him to bed at last, just as dawn was 
breaking, and Strickland invited me to have another 
whisky and soda. While we were drinking he 
talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted 
that it baffled him completely. Strickland hates 
being mystified by natives, because his business in 
life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. 
He has not yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen 
or twenty years he will have made some small 
progress. 

“They should have mauled us,” he said, “instead 
of mewing at us. I wonder what they meant. I 
don’t like it one little bit.” 


100 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


I said that the Managing Committee of the temple 
would in all probability bring a criminal action 
against us for insulting their religion. There was 
a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly 
met Fleete’s offense. Strickland said he only hoped 
and prayed that they would do this. Before I 
left I looked into Fleete’s room, and saw him lying 
on his right side, scratching his left breast. Then 
I went to bed cold, depressed, and unhappy, at 
seven o’clock in the morning. 

At one o’clock I rode over to Strickland’s house 
to inquire after Fleete’s head. I imagined that it 
would be a sore one. Fleete was breakfasting and 
seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was 
abusing the cook for not supplying him with an 
underdone chop. A man who can eat raw meat 
after a wet night is a curiosity. I told Fleete this 
and he laughed. 

“You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts,” he 
said. “I’ve been bitten to pieces, but only in one 
place.” 

“Let’s have a look at the bite,” said Strickland. 
“It may have gone down since this morning.” 

While the chops were being cooked, Fleete 
opened his shirt and showed us, just over his left 
breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black 
rosettes—the five or six irregular blotches arranged 
in a circle—on a leopard’s hide. Strickland looked 
and said, “It was only pink this morning. It’s 
grown black now.” 

Fleete ran to a glass. 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


101 


“By Jove!” he said, “this is nasty. What is it?” 

We could not answer. Here the chops came in, 
all red and juicy, and Fleete bolted three in a 
most offensive manner. He ate on his right 
grinders only, and threw his head over his right 
shoulder as he snapped the meat. When he had 
finished, it struck him that he had been behaving 
strangely, for he said, apologetically, “I don’t 
think I ever felt so hungry in my life. I’ve bolted 
like an ostrich.” 

After breakfast Strickland said to me, “Don’t 
go. Stay here, and stay for the night.” 

Seeing that my house was not three miles from 
Strickland’s this request was absurd. But Strick¬ 
land insisted, and was going to say something when 
Fleete interrupted by declaring in a shame-faced 
way that he felt hungry again. Strickland sent a 
man to my house to fetch over my bedding and a 
horse, and we three went down to Strickland’s 
stables to pass the Lours until it was time to go out 
for a ride. The man who has a weakness for 
horses never wearies of inspecting them; and when 
two men are killing time in this way they gather 
knowledge and lies the one from the other. 

There were five horses in the stables, and I shall 
never forget the scene as we tried to look them over. 
They seemed to have gone mad. They reared and 
screamed and nearly tore up their pickets; they 
sweated and shivered and lathered and were dis¬ 
traught with fear. Strickland’s horses used to 
know him as well as his dogs; which made the 


102 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


matter more curious. We left the stable for fear of 
the brutes throwing themselves in their panic. Then 
Strickland turned back and called me. The horses 
were still frightened, but they let us “gentle” and 
make much of them, and put their heads in our 
bosoms. 

“They aren’t afraid of us ” said Strickland. “D’ 
you know, I’d give three months’ pay if Outrage 
here could talk.” 

But Outrage was dumb, and could only cuddle 
up to his master and blow out his nostrils, as is the 
custom of horses when they wish to explain things 
but can’t. Fleete came up when we were in the 
stalls, and as soon as the horses saw him, their 
fright broke out afresh. It was all that we could 
do to escape from the place unkicked. Strickland 
said, “They don’t seem to love you, Fleete.” 

“Nonsense,” said Fleete; “my mare will follow 
me like a dog.” He went to her; she was in a 
loose-box; but as he slipped the bars she plunged, 
knocked him down, and broke away into the garden. 
I laughed, but Strickland was not amused. He 
took his moustache in both fists and pulled at it 
till it nearly came out. Fleete, instead of going 
off to chase his property, yawned, saying that he 
felt sleepy. He went to the house to lie down, 
which was a foolish way of spending New Year’s 
Day. 

Strickland sat with me in the stables and asked 
if I had noticed anything peculiar in Fleete’s man¬ 
ner. I said that he ate his food like a beast: but 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


103 


that this might have been the result of living alone 
in the hills out of the reach of society as refined 
and elevating as ours, for instance. Strickland 
was not amused. I do not think that he listened 
to me, for his next sentence referred to the mark 
on Fleete’s breast and I said that it might have 
been caused by blister-flies, or that it was possibly 
a birthmark newly bom and now visible for the 
first time. We both agreed that it was unpleasant 
to look at, and Strickland found occasion to say that 
I was a fool. 

“I can’t tell you what I think now,” said he, 
“because you would call me a madman; but you 
must stay with me for the next few days, if you can. 
I want you to watch Fleete, but don’t tell me what 
you think till I have made up my mind.” 

“But I am dining out tonight,” I said. 

“So am I,” said Strickland, “and so is Fleete. 
At least if he doesn’t change his mind.” 

We walked about the garden smoking, but saying 
nothing—because we were friends, and talking 
spoils good tobacco—till our pipes were out. Then 
we went to wake up Fleete. He was wide awake 
and fidgeting about his room. 

“I say, I want some more chops,” he said. “Can 
I get them?” 

We laughed and said, “Go and change. The 
ponies will be round in a minute.” 

“All right,” said Fleete. “I’ll go when I get 
the chops—underdone ones, mind.” 

He seemed to be quite in earnest. It was four 


104 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


o’clock and we had had breakfast at one; still, 
for a long time, he demanded those underdone 
chops. Then he changed into riding clothes and 
went out into the veranda. His pony—the mare 
had not been caught—would not let him come near. 
All three horses were unmanageable—mad with 
fear—and finally Fleete said that he would stay at 
home and get something to eat. Strickland and I 
rode out wondering. As we passed the temple of 
Hanuman, the Silver Man came out and mewed at 
us. 

“He is not one of the regular priests of the 
temple,” said Strickland. “I think I should pecu¬ 
liarly like to lay my hands on him.” 

There was no spring in our gallop on the race¬ 
course that evening. The horses were stale, and 
moved as though they had been ridden out. 

“The fright after breakfast has been too much 
for them,” said Strickland. 

That was the only remark he made through the 
remainder of the ride. Once or twice I think he 
swore to himself; but that did not count. 

We came back in the dark at seven o’clock, and 
saw that there were no lights in the bungalow. 
“Careless ruffians my servants are!” said Strick¬ 
land. 

My horse reared at something on the carriage 
drive, and Fleete stood up under its nose. 

“What are you doing, grovelling about the gar¬ 
den?” said Strickland. 

But both horses bolted and nearly threw us. 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


105 


We dismounted by the stables and returned to 
Fleete, who was on his hands and knees under the 
orange-bushes. 

“What the devil’s wrong with you?” said Strick¬ 
land. 

“Nothing, nothing in the world,” said Fleete, 
speaking very quickly and thickly. “I’ve been 
gardening—botanizing, you know. The smell of 
the earth is delightful. I think I’m going for a 
walk—a long walk—all night.” 

Then I saw that there was something excessively 
out of order somewhere, and I said to Strickland, 
“I am not dining out.” 

“Bless you!” said Strickland. “Here, Fleete, 
get up. You’ll catch fever there. Come in to 
dinner and let’s have the lamps lit. We’ll all dine 
at home.” 

Fleete stood up unwillingly, and said, “No lamps 
—no lamps. It’s much nicer here. Let’s dine out¬ 
side and have some more chops—lots of ’em and 
underdone—bloody ones with gristle.” 

Now a December evening in Northern India is 
bitterly cold, and Fleete’s suggestion was that of 
a maniac. 

“Come in,” said Strickland, sternly. “Come in 
at once.” 

Fleete came, and when the lamps were brought, 
we saw that he was literally plastered with dirt 
from head to foot. He must have been rolling 
in the garden. He shrank from the light and 
went to his room. His eyes were horrible to look 


106 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


at. There was a green light behind them, not in 
them, if you understand, and the man’s lower lip 
hung down. 

Strickland said, “There is going to be trouble— 
big trouble—tonight. Don’t you change your rid- 
ing-things.” 

We waited and waited for Fleete’s reappear¬ 
ance, and ordered dinner in the meantime. We 
could hear him moving about his own room, but 
there was no light there. Presently from the room 
came the long-drawn howl of a wolf. 

People write and talk lightly of blood running 
cold and hair standing up and things of that kind. 
Both sensations are too horrible to be trifled with. 
My heart stopped as though a knife had been 
driven through it, and Strickland turned as white 
as the table-cloth. 

The howl was repeated, and was answered by 
another howl far across the fields. 

That set the gilded roof on the horror. Strickland 
dashed into Fleete’s room. I followed, and we 
saw Fleete getting out of the window. He made 
beast-noises in the back of his throat. He could 
not answer us when we shouted at him. He spat. 

I don’t quite remember what followed, but I 
think that Strickland must have stunned him with 
the long boot-jack or else I should never have been 
able to sit on his chest. Fleete could not speak, 
he could only snarl, and his snarls were those of 
a wolf, not of a man. The human spirit must have 
been giving away all day and have died out with 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


107 


the twilight. We were dealing with a beast that 
had once been Fleete. 

The affair was beyond any human and rational 
experience. I tried to say “Hydrophobia,” but the 
word wouldn’t come, because I knew that I was 
lying. 

We bound this beast with leather thongs of the 
punkah-rope, and tied its thumbs and big toes 
together, and gagged it with a shoe-horn, which 
makes a very efficient gag if you know how to 
arrange it. Then we carried it into the dining¬ 
room and sent a man to Dumoise, the doctor, telling 
him to come over at once. After we had despatched 
the messenger and were drawing breath, Strickland 
said, “It’s no good. This isn’t any doctor’s work.” 
I, also, knew that he spoke the truth. 

The beast’s head was free, and it threw it about 
from side to side. Any one entering the room 
would have believed that we were curing a wolf’s 
pelt. That was the most loathsome accessory of all. 

Strickland sat with his chin in the heel of his 
fist, watching the beast as it wriggled on the ground, 
but saying nothing. The shirt had been tom open 
in the scuffle and showed the black rosette mark 
on the left breast. It stood out like a blister. 

In the silence of the watching we heard some¬ 
thing without mewing like a she-otter. We both 
rose to our feet, and, I answer for myself, not 
Strickland, felt sick—actually and physically sick. 
We told each other, as did the men in Pinafore , 
that it was the cat. 


108 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


Dumoise arrived, and I never saw a little man 
so unprofessionally shocked. He said that it was 
a heart-rending case of hydrophobia, and that noth¬ 
ing could be done. At least any palliative measures 
would only prolong the agony. The beast was 
foaming at the mouth. Fleete, as we told Dumoise, 
had been bitten by dogs once or twice. Any man 
who keeps half a dozen terriers must expect a nip 
now and again. Dumoise could offer no help. 
He could only certify that Fleete was dying of 
hydrophobia. The beast was then howling, for it 
had managed to spit out the shoe-horn. Dumoise 
said that he would be ready to certify to the cause 
of death, and that the end was certain. He was 
a good little man, and he offered to remain with 
us; but Strickland refused the kindness. He did 
not wish to poison Dumoise’s New Year. He would 
only ask him not to give the real cause of Fleete’s 
death to the public. 

So Dumoise left, deeply agitated; and as soon 
as the noise of the cart wheels had died away, 
Strickland told me, in a whisper, his suspicions. 
They were so wildly improbable that he dared 
not say them out aloud; and I, who entertained 
all Strickland’s beliefs, was so ashamed of own¬ 
ing to them that I pretended to disbelieve. 

“Even if the Silver Man had bewitched Fleete 
for polluting the image of Hanuman, the punish¬ 
ment could not have fallen so quickly.” 

As I was whispering this the cry outside the 
house rose again, and the beast fell into a fresh 


RUDYARD KIPLING 109 

paroxysm of struggling till we were afraid that 
the thongs that held it would give away. 

“Watch!” said Strickland. “If this happens 
six times I shall take the law into my own hands. 
I order you to help me.” 

He went into his room and came out in a few 
minutes with the barrels of an old shot-gun, a piece 
of fishing line, some thick cord, and his heavy 
wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions 
had followed the cry by two seconds in each case, 
and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker. 

Strickland muttered. “But he can’t take away 
the life! He can’t take away the life!” 

I said, though I knew that I was arguing against 
myself, “It may be a cat. It must be a cat. If 
the Silver Man is responsible, why does he dare 
to come here?” 

Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put 
the gun-barrels into the glow of the fire, spread 
the twine on the table and broke a walking stick 
in two. There was one yard of fishing line, gut, 
lapped with wire, such as is used for mahseer-fish- 
ing, and he tied the two ends together in a loop. 

Then he said, “How can we catch him? He must 
be taken alive and unhurt.” 

I said that we must trust in Providence, and go 
out softly with polo-sticks into the shrubbery at 
the front of the house. The man or animal that 
made the cry was evidently moving round the house 
as regularly as a night-watchman. We could wait 
in the bushes till he came by and knock him over. 


110 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


Strickland accepted this suggestion, and we 
slipped out from a bath-room window into the 
front veranda and then across the carriage drive 
into the bushes. 

In the moonlight we could see the leper coming 
round the comer of the house. He was perfectly 
naked, and from time to time he mewed and 
stopped to dance with his shadow. It was an 
unattractive sight, and thinking of poor Fleete, 
brought to such degradation by so foul a creature, 
I put away all my doubts and resolved to help 
Strickland from the heated gun-barrels to the loop 
of twine—from the loins to the head and back 
again—with all the tortures that might be needful. 

The leper halted in the front porch for a moment 
and we jumped out on him with the sticks. He 
was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that 
he might escape or be fatally injured before we 
caught him. We had an idea that lepers were 
frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect. 
Strickland knocked his legs from under him and 
I put my foot on his neck. He mewed hideously, 
and even through my riding-boots I could feel that 
his flesh was not the flesh of a clean man. 

He struck at us with his hand and feet-stumps. 
We looped the lash of a dog-whip round him, under 
the armpits, and dragged him backward into the 
hall and so into the dining-room where the beast 
lay. There we tied him with trunk-straps. He 
made no attempt to escape, but mewed. 

When we confronted him with the beast the scene 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


111 


was beyond description. The beast doubled back¬ 
ward into a bow as though he had been poisoned 
with strychnine, and moaned in the most pitiable 
fashion. Several other things happened also, but 
they cannot be put down here. 

“I think I was right,” said Strickland. “Now 
we will ask him to cure this case.” 

But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped 
a towel round his hand and took the gun-barrels 
out of fire. I put the half of the broken walking 
stick through the loop of the fishing-line and buck¬ 
led the leper comfortably to Strickland’s bedstead. 
I understood then how men and women and little 
children can endure to see a witch burned alive; 
for the beast was moaning on the floor, and though 
the Silver Man had no face, you could see horrible 
feelings passing through the slab that took its place, 
exactly as waves of heat play across red-hot iron- 
gun-barrels for instance. 

Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for 
a moment and we got to work. This part is not to 
be printed. 


The dawn was beginning to break when the leper 
spoke. His mewings had not been satisfactory up 
to that point. The beast had fainted from exhaus¬ 
tion and the house was very still. We unstrapped 
the leper and told him to take away the evil spirit. 
He crawled to the beast and laid his hand upon the 


112 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down 
and whined, drawing in his breath as he did so. 

We watched the face of the beast, and saw the 
soul of Fleete coming back into the eyes. Then 
a sweat broke out on the forehead and the eyes— 
they were human eyes—closed. We waited for 
an hour but Fleete still slept. We carried him to 
his room and bade the leper go, giving him the 
bedstead and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his 
nakedness, the gloves and the towels with which 
we had touched him, and the whip that had been 
hooked round his body. He put the sheet about 
him and went out into the early morning without 
speaking or mewing. 

Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A 
night-gong, far away in the city, made seven o’clock. 

“Exactly four-and-twenty hours!” said Strick¬ 
land. “And I’ve done enough to ensure my dis¬ 
missal from the service, besides permanent quarters 
in a lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are 
awake?” 

The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor 
and was singeing the carpet. The smell was entire¬ 
ly real. 

That morning at eleven we two together went 
to wake up Fleete. We looked and saw that the 
black leopard-rosette on his chest had disappeared. 
He was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as he 
saw us, he said, “Oh! Confound you fellows. 
Happy New Year to you. Never mix your liquors. 
I’m nearly dead.” 


RUDYARD KIPLING 


113 


“Thanks for your kindness, but you’re over¬ 
time,” said Strickland. “Today is the morning 
of the second. You’ve slept the clock round with 
a vengeance.” 

The door opened, and little Dumoise put his 
head in. He had come on foot, and fancied that we 
were laying out Fleete. 

“I’ve brought a nurse,” said Dumoise. “I suppose 
that she can come in for . . . what is necessary.” 

“By all means,” said Fleete, cheerily, sitting up 
in bed. “Bring on your nurses.” 

Dumoise was dumb. Strickland led him out 
and explained that there must have been a mistake 
in the diagnosis. Dumoise remained dumb and 
left the house hastily. He considered that his pro¬ 
fessional reputation had been injured, and was 
inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery. 
Strickland went out too. When he came back, he 
said that he had been to call on the Temple of 
Hanuman to offer redress for the pollution of the 
god, and had been solemnly assured that no white 
man had ever touched the idol and that he was 
an incarnation of all the virtues laboring under a 
delusion. “What do you think?” said Strickland. 

I said, “ ‘There are more things . . . ’ ” 

But Strickland hates that quotation. He says 
that I have worn it theadbare. 

One other curious thing happened which fright¬ 
ened me as much as anything in all the night’s 
work. When Fleete was dressed he came into the 
dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick 


114 THE MARK OF THE BEAST 


of moving his nose when he sniffed. “Horrid 
doggy smell here,” said he. “You should really 
keep those terriers of yours in better order. Try 
sulphur, Strick.” 

But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold 
of the back of a chair, and, without warning, went 
into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is terrible to 
see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then 
it struck me that we had fought for Fleete’s soul 
with the Silver Man in that room, and had dis¬ 
graced ourselves as Englishmen forever, and I 
laughed and gasped and gurgled just as shamefully 
as Strickland, while Fleete thought that we had 
both gone mad. We never told him what we had 
done. 

Some years later, when Strickland had married 
and was a church-going member of society for his 
wife’s sake, we reviewed the incident dispassion¬ 
ately, and Strickland suggested that I should put 
it before the public. 

I cannot myself see that this step is likely to 
clear up the mystery; because, in the first place, 
no one will believe a rather unpleasant story, and, 
in the second, it is well known to every right-mind¬ 
ed man that the gods of the heathen are stone and 
brass, and any attempt to deal with them otherwise 
is justly condemned. 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 

RICHARD MARSH* 

He began in accents which halted not a little. 
By degrees his voice grew firmer. Words came 
from him with greater fluency. 

“I am not yet forty. So when I tell you that 
twenty years ago I was a mere youth I am stating 
what is a sufficiently obvious truth. It is twenty 
years ago since the events of which I am going to 
speak transpired. 

“I lost both my parents when I was quite a lad, 
and by their death I was left in a position in which 
I was, to an unusual extent in one so young, my 
own master. I was ever of a rambling turn of 
mind, and when, at the mature age of eighteen, I 
left school, I decided that I should learn more 
from travel than from sojourn at a university. 
So, since there was no one to say me nay, instead 
of going either to Oxford or Cambridge, I went 
abroad. After a few months I found myself in 
Egypt,—I was down with fever at Shepheard’s 
Hotel in Cairo. I had caught it by drinking pol¬ 
luted water during an excursion with some Bed¬ 
ouins to Palmyra. 

When the fever had left me I went out one night 

* From “The Beetle.” Brentano’s, 1922. 

115 


116 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 


into the town in search of amusement. I went, 
unaccompanied, into the native quarter, not a wise 
thing to do, especially at night, but at eighteen one 
is not always wise, and I was weary of the monot¬ 
ony of the sick-room, and eager for something 
which had in it a spice of adventure. I found 
myself in a street which I have reason to believe 
is no longer existing. It had a French name, and 
was called the Rue de Rabagas—I saw the name on 
the corner as I turned into it, and it has left an 
impress on the tablets of my memory which is never 
likely to be obliterated. 

“It was a narrow street, and, of course, a dirty 
one, ill-lit, and, apparently, at the moment of my 
appearance, deserted. I had gone, perhaps, half¬ 
way down its tortuous length, blundering more 
than once into the kennel, wondering what fantastic 
whim had brought me into such unsavory quarters, 
and what would happen to me, if, as seemed ex¬ 
tremely possible, I lost my way. On a sudden my 
ears were saluted by sounds which proceeded from 
a house which I was passing,—sounds of music 
and of singing. 

“I paused. I stood awhile to listen. 

“There was an open window on my right, which 
was screened by latticed blinds. From the room 
which was behind these blinds the sounds were 
coming. Someone was singing, accompanied by 
an instrument resembling a guitar,—singing un¬ 
commonly well.” 

Mr. Lessingham stopped. A stream of recol- 


RICHARD MARSH 117 

lection seemed to come flooding over him. A 
dreamy look came into his eyes. 

“I remember it all as clearly as if it were yester¬ 
day. How it all comes back,—the dirty street, the 
evil smells, the imperfect light, the girl’s voice 
filling all at once the air. It was a girl’s voice— 
full, and round, and sweet; an organ seldom met 
with, especially in such a place as that. She sang 
a little chansonette, which, just then, half Europe 
was humming,—it occurred in an opera which they 
were acting at one of the Boulevard theatres,— 
‘La P’tite Voyageuse.’ The effect, coming so unex¬ 
pectedly, was startling. I stood and heard her to 
an end. 

“Inspired by I know not what impulse of curios¬ 
ity, when the song was finished, I moved one of the 
lattice blinds a little aside, so as to enable me 
to get a glimpse of the singer. I found myself 
looking into what seemed to be a sort of cafe, 
—one of those places which are found all over 
the Continent, in which women sing in order to 
attract custom. There was a low platform at one 
end of the room, and on it were seated three 
women. One of them had evidently just been 
accompanying her own song,—she still had an 
instrument of music in her hands, and was strik¬ 
ing a few idle notes. The other two had been acting 
as audience. They were attired in the fantastic 
apparel which the women who are found in such 
places generally wear. An old woman was sitting 
knitting in a comer, whom I took to be the inevi- 


118 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 


table patronne . With the exception of these four 
the place was empty. 

“They must have heard me touch the lattice, 
or seen it moving, for no sooner did I glance with¬ 
in than the three pairs of eyes on the platform 
were raised and fixed on mine. The old woman 
in the corner alone showed no consciousness of 
my neighbourhood. We eyed one another in si¬ 
lence for a second or two. Then the girl with 
the harp,—the instrument she was manipulating 
proved to be fashioned more like a harp than a 
guitar—called out to me. 

“ ‘Entrez, monsieur!—Soyez le bienvenu!’ 

“I was a little tired. Rather curious as to where¬ 
abouts I was,—the place struck me, even at that 
first momentary glimpse, as hardly in the ordinary 
line of that kind of thing. And not unwilling to 
listen to a repetition of the former song, or to 
another sung by the same singer. 

“ ‘On condition,’ I replied, ‘that you sing me 
another song.’ 

“ ‘Ah, monsieur, with the greatest pleasure in the 
world I will sing you twenty.’ 

“She was almost, if not quite, as good as her 
word. She entertained me with song after song. 
I may safely say that I have seldom if ever heard 
melody more enchanting. All languages seemed to 
be the same to her. She sang in French and Italian, 
German and English,—in tongues with which I was 
unfamiliar. It was in these Eastern harmonies 
that she was most successful. They were inde- 


RICHARD MARSH 


119 


scribably weird and thrilling, and she delivered 
them with a verve and sweetness which was amaz¬ 
ing. I sat at one of the little tables with which 
the room was dotted, listening entranced. 

“Time passed more rapidly than I supposed. 
While she sang I sipped the liquor with which the 
old woman had supplied me. So enthralled was 
I by the display of the girl’s astonishing gifts that I 
did not notice what it was I was drinking. Looking 
back I can only surmise that it was some poisonous 
concoction of the creature’s own. That one small 
glass had on me the strangest effect. I was still 
weak from the fever which I had only just suc¬ 
ceeded in shaking off, and that, no doubt, had 
something to do with the result. But, as I continued 
to sit, I was conscious that I was sinking into a 
lethargic condition, against which I was incapable 
of struggling. 

“After a while the original performer ceased 
her efforts, and, her companions taking her place, 
she came and joined me at the little table. Look¬ 
ing at my watch I was surprised to perceive the 
lateness of the hour. I rose to leave. She caught 
me by the wrist. 

“ ‘Do not go,’ she said—she spoke English of a 
sort, and with the queerest accent. ‘All is well 
with you. Rest awhile.’ 

“You will smile,—I should smile, perhaps, were 
I the listener instead of you, but it is the simple 
truth that her touch had on me what I can only 
describe as a magnetic influence. As her fingers 


120 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 


closed upon my wrist, I felt as powerless in her 
grasp as if she held me with bands of steel. What 
seemed an invitation was virtually a command. 
I had to say whether I would or wouldn’t. She 
called for more liquor, and at what again was 
really her command I drank of it. I do not think 
that after she touched my wrist I uttered a word. 
She did all the talking. And, while she talked, 
she kept her eyes fixed on my face. Those eyes 
of hers! They were a devil’s. I can positively 
affirm that they had on me a diabolical effect. 
They robbed me of my .consciousness, of my^ 
power of volition, of my capacity to think,—they 
made me as wax in her hands. My last recollec¬ 
tion of that fatal night is of her sitting in front 
of me, bending over the table, stroking my wrist 
with her extended fingers, staring at me with her 
awful eyes. After that, a curtain seems to descend. 
There comes a period of oblivion.” 

Mr. Lessingham ceased. His manner was calm 
and self-contained enough; but, in spite of that, I 
could see that the mere recollection of the things 
which he told me moved his nature to its founda¬ 
tions. There was eloquence in the drawn lines 
about his mouth, and in the strained expression 
of his eyes. 

So far his tale was sufficiently commonplace. 
Places such as the one which he described abound 
in the Cairo of to-day; and many are the English¬ 
men who have entered them to their exceeding bitter 
cost. With that keen intuition which has done him 


RICHARD MARSH 121 

yeoman’s service in the political arena, Mr. Les- 
singham at once perceived the direction my 
thoughts were taking. 

“You have heard this tale before?—No doubt. 
And often. The traps are many, and the fools 
and the unwary are not a few. The singularity 
of my experience is still to come. You must for¬ 
give me if I seem to stumble in the telling. I am 
anxious to present my case as baldly and with as 
little appearance of exaggeration as possible. I 
say with as little appearance, for some appearance 
of exaggeration I fear is unavoidable. My case 
is so unique, and so out of the common run of our 
every-day experience, that the plainest possible 
statement must smack of the sensational. 

“As, I fancy, you have guessed, when under¬ 
standing returned to me, I found myself in an 
apartment with which I was unfamiliar. I was 
lying, undressed, on a heap of rugs in a corner of 
a low-pitched room which was furnished in a fash¬ 
ion which, when I grasped the details, filled me 
with amazement. By my side knelt the Woman 
of the Songs. Leaning over, she wooed my mouth 
with kisses. I cannot describe to you the sense of 
horror and of loathing with which the contact of her 
lips oppressed me. There was about her some¬ 
thing so unnatural, so inhuman, that I believe 
even then I could have destroyed her with as little 
sense of moral turpitude as if she had been some 
noxious insect. 

“ ‘Where am I?’ I exclaimed. 


122 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 


46 ‘You are with the children of Isis,’ she replied. 
What she meant I did not know, and do not to this 
hour. 

“ ‘You are in the hands of the great goddess— 
of the mother of men.’ 

“ ‘How did I come here?’ 

“ ‘By the loving kindness of the great mother.’ 

“I do not, of course, pretend to give you the 
exact text of her words, but they were to that effect. 

“Half raising myself on the heap of rugs, I 
gazed about me, and was astonished at what I saw. 

“The place in which I was, though the reverse 
of lofty, was of considerable size,—I could not 
conceive whereabouts it could be. The walls and 
roof were of bare stone,—as though the whole had 
been hewed out of the solid rock. It seemed to be 
some sort of temple, and was redolent with the 
most extraordinary odour. An altar stood about 
the centre, fashioned out of a single block of stone. 
On it a fire burned with a faint blue flame—the 
fumes which rose from it were no doubt chiefly 
responsible for the prevailing perfumes. Behind 
it was a huge bronze figure, more than life size. 
It was in a sitting posture, and represented a wo¬ 
man. Although it resembled no portrayal of her 
I have seen either before or since, I came after¬ 
wards to understand that it was meant for Isis. 
On the idol’s brow was poised a beetle. That the 
creature was alive seemed clear, for, as I looked 
at it, it opened and shut its wings. 

“If the one on the forehead of the goddess was 


RICHARD MARSH 


123 


the only live beetle which the place contained, it 
was not the only representation. It was modelled 
in the solid stone of the roof, and depicted in flam¬ 
ing colours on hangings which here and there were 
hung against the walls. Wherever the eye turned 
it rested on a scarab. The effect was bewildering. 
It was as though one saw things through the dis¬ 
torted glamour of a nightmare. I asked myself 
if I were not still dreaming; if my appearance of 
consciousness were not after all a mere delusion; 
if I had really regained my senses. 

“And here, Mr. Champnell, I wish to point out, 
and to emphasise the fact, that I am not prepared 
to positively affirm what portion of my adventures 
in that extraordinary, and horrible place, was actu¬ 
ality, and what the product of a feverish imagina¬ 
tion. Had I been persuaded that all I thought I 
saw, I really did see, I should have opened my 
lips long ago, let the consequences to myself have 
been what they might. But there is the crux. The 
happenings were of such an incredible character, 
and my condition was such an abnormal one,—I 
was never really myself from the first moment to 
the last—that I have hesitated, and still do hesi¬ 
tate, to assert where, precisely, fiction ended and 
fact began. 

“With some misty notion of testing my actual 
condition I endeavored to get off the heap of rugs 
on which I reclined. As I did so the woman at my 
side laid her hand against my chest, lightly. But, 
had her gentle pressure been the equivalent of a 


124 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 


ton of iron, it could not have been more effectual. 
I collapsed, sank back upon the rugs, and lay there, 
panting for breath, wondering if I had crossed the 
border line which divides madness from sanity. 

66 ‘Let me get up!—let me go!’ I gasped. 

“ ‘Nay,’ she murmured, ‘stay with me yet awhile, 
0 my beloved.’ 

“And again she kissed me.” 

Once more Mr. Lessingham paused. An invol¬ 
untary shudder went all over him. In spite of 
the evidently great effort which he was making 
to retain his self-control his features were con¬ 
torted by an anguished spasm. For some seconds 
he seemed at a loss to find words to enable him 
to continue. 

When he did go on, his voice was harsh and 
strained. 

“I am altogether incapable of even hinting to you 
the nauseous nature of that woman’s kisses. They 
filled me with an indescribable repulsion. I look 
back at them with a feeling of physical, mental, 
and moral horror, across an interval of twenty 
years. The most dreadful part of it was that I 
was wholly incapable of offering even the faint¬ 
est resistance to her caresses. I lay there like a 
log. She did with me as she would, and in dumb 
agony I endured.” 

He took his handkerchief from his pocket, and, 
although the day was cool, with it he wiped the per¬ 
spiration from his brow. 

“To dwell in detail on what occurred during my 


RICHARD MARSH 


125 


involutary sojourn in that fearful place is beyond 
my power. I cannot even venture to attempt it. 
The attempt, were it made, would be futile, and, to 
me, painful beyond measure. I seem to have seen 
all that happened as in a glass darkly,—with 
about it all an element of unreality. As I have 
already remarked, the things which revealed them¬ 
selves, dimly, to my perception, seemed too bizarre, 
too hideous, to be true. 

“It was only afterwards, when I was in a position 
to compare dates, that I was enabled to determine 
what had been the length of my imprisonment. It 
appears that I was in that horrible den more than 
two months,—two unspeakable months. And the 
whole time there were comings and goings, a phan¬ 
tasmagoric array of eerie figures continually 
passed to and fro before my hazy eyes. What I 
judge to have been religious services took place; in 
which the altar, the bronze image, and the beetle 
on its brow, figure largely. Not only were they 
conducted with a bewildering confusion of myste¬ 
rious rites, but, if my memory is in the least degree 
trustworthy, they were orgies of nameless horrors. 
I seem to have seen things take place at them at 
the mere thought of which the brain reels and 
trembles. 

“Indeed it is in connection with the cult of the 
obscene deity to whom these wretched creatures 
paid their scandalous vows that my most awful 
memories seem to have been associated. It may 
have been—I hope it was, a mirage born of my 


126 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 


half-delirious state, but it seemed to me that they 
offered human sacrifices.” 

When Mr. Lessingham said this, I pricked up 
my ears. For reasons of my own, which will 
immediately transpire, I had been wondering if 
he would make any reference to a human sacrifice. 
He noted my display of interest,—but misappre¬ 
hended the cause. 

“I see you start, I do not wonder. But I repeat 
that unless I was the victim of some extraordinary 
species of double sight—in which case the whole 
business would resolve itself into the fabric of a 
dream, and I should indeed thank God!—I saw, 
on more than one occasion, a human sacrifice 
offered on that stone altar, presumably to the grim 
image which looked down upon it. And, unless I 
err, in each case the sacrificial object was a woman, 
stripped to the skin, as white as you or I,—and 
before they burned her they subjected her to every 
variety of outrage of which even the minds of 
demons could conceive. More than once since then 
I have seemed to hear the shrieks of the victims 
ringing through the air, mingled with the trium¬ 
phant cries of her frenzied murderers, and the 
music of their harps. 

“It was the cumulative horrors of such a scene 
which gave me the strength, or the courage, or the 
madness, I know not which it was, to burst the 
bonds which bound me, and which, even in the 
bursting, made of me, even to this hour, a haunted 
man. 


RICHARD MARSH 


127 


“There had been a sacrifice—unless, as I have 
repeatedly observed, the whole thing was nothing 
but a dream. A woman—a young and lovely 
Englishwoman, if I could believe the evidence of 
my own eyes, had been outraged, and burnt alive, 
while I lay there helpless, looking on. The busi¬ 
ness was concluded. The ashes of the victim had 
been consumed by the participants. The worship¬ 
pers had departed. I was left alone with the woman 
of the songs, who apparently acted as the guard¬ 
ian of that worse than slaughterhouse. She was, 
as usual after such an orgy, rather a devil than a 
human being, drunk with an insensate frenzy, de¬ 
lirious with inhuman longings. As she approached 
to offer to me her loathed caresses, I was on 
a sudden conscious of something which I had not 
felt before when in her company. It was as though 
something had slipped away from me,—some 
weight which had oppressed me, some bond by 
which I had been bound. I was aroused, all at 
once, to a sense of freedom; to a knowledge that 
the blood which coursed through my veins was 
after all my own, that I was master of my own 
honor. 

“I can only suppose that through all those weeks 
she had kept me there in a state of mesmeric 
stupor. That, taking advantage of the weakness 
which the fever had left behind, by the exercise 
of her diabolical arts, she had not allowed me to 
pass out of a condition of hypnotic trance. Now, 
for some reason, the cord was loosed. Possibly her 


128 


THE TEMPLE OF ISIS 


absorption in her religious duties had caused her 
to forget to tighten it. Anyhow, as she approached 
me, she approached a man, and one who, for the 
first time for many a day, was his own man. She 
herself seemed wholly unconscious of anything of 
the kind. As she drew nearer to me, and nearer, 
she appeared to be entirely oblivious of the fact 
that I was anything but the fibreless, emasculated 
creature which, up to that moment, she had made 
of me. 

“But she knew it when she touched me—when 
she stooped to press her lips to mine. At that 
instant the accumulating rage which had been 
smouldering in my breast through all those leaden 
torturing hours, sprang into flame. Leaping off my 
couch of rugs, I flung my hands about her throat, 
—and then she knew I was awake. Then she 
strove to tighten the cord which she had suffered 
to become unduly loose. Her baleful eyes were 
fixed on mine. I knew that she was putting out 
her utmost force to trick me of my manhood. But 
I fought with her like one possessed, and I con¬ 
quered—in a fashion. I compressed her throat 
with my two hands as with an iron vise. I knew 
that I was struggling for more than life, that the 
odds were all against me, that I was staking my all 
upon the casting of a die—I stuck at nothing which 
could make me victor. 

“Tighter and tighter my pressure grew—I did 
not stay to think if I was killing her—till on a 
sudden-” 



RICHARD MARSH 


129 


Mr. Lessingham stopped. He stared with fixed, 
glassy eyes, as if the whole was being re-enacted 
in front of him. His voice faltered. I thought he 
would break down. But, with an effort, he con¬ 
tinued. 

“On a sudden, I felt her slipping from between 
my fingers. Without the slightest warning, in an 
instant she had vanished, and where, not a moment 
before, she herself had been, I found myself con¬ 
fronting a monstrous beetle—a huge, writhing 
creation of some wild nightmare. 

“At first the creature stood as high as I did. 
But, as I stared at it, in stupefied amazement—as 
you may easily imagine—the thing dwindled while 
I gazed. I did not stop to see how far the process 
of dwindling continued—a stark, raving madman 
for the nonce, I fled as if all the fiends in hell were 
at my heels.” 


THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Impia tortorum longas hie turba furores 
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. 

Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, 

Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. 

[Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon 
the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris ] 

I WAS sick—sick unto death with that long agony; 
and when they at length unbound me, and I was 
permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving 
me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death— 
was the last distinct accentuation which reached my 
ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial 
voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate 
hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution 
—perhaps from its association in fancy with the 
burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period, 
for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I 
saw—but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw 
the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared 
to me white—whiter than the sheet upon which I 
trace these words—and thin even to grotesqueness; 
thin with the intensity of their expression of firm¬ 
ness—of immovable resolution—of stern contempt 
of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what 
to me was Fate were still issuing from those lips. I 

saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them 

130 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


131 


fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered 
because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few 
moments of delicious horror, the soft and nearly 
imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which 
inwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then 
my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the 
table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and 
seemed white slender angels who would save me; 
but then, all at once, there came a most deadly 
nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my 
frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a gal¬ 
vanic battery, while the angel forms became mean¬ 
ingless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that 
from them there would be no help. And then there 
stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the 
thought of what sweet rest there must be in the 
grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and 
it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; 
but just as my spirit came at length properly to 
feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges van¬ 
ished, as if magically, from before me; the tall 
candles sank into nothingness; their flames went 
out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; 
all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad, 
rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then 
silence, and stillness, and night were the universe. 

I had swooned; but still will not say that all of 
consciousness was lost. What of it there remained 
I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet 
all was not lost. In the deepest slumber—no! In 
delirium—no! In a swoon—no! In death—no! 


132 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no 
immortality for man. Arousing from the most pro¬ 
found of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of 
some dream. Yet in a second afterward (so frail 
may that web have been) we remember not that we 
have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon 
there are two stages: first, that of the sense of 
mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of 
physical existence. It seems probable that if, upon 
reaching the second stage, we could recall the 
impressions of the first, we should find these im¬ 
pressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. 
And that gulf is—what? How at least shall we dis¬ 
tinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But 
if the impressions of what I have termed the first 
stage are not, at will, recalled, yet, after long 
interval, do they not come unbidden, while we 
marvel whence they come? He who has never 
swooned is not he who finds strange places and 
wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he 
who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that 
the many may not view; is not he who ponders over 
the perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose 
brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some 
musical cadence which has never before arrested 
his attention. 

Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to re¬ 
member, amid earnest struggles to regather some 
token of the state of seeming nothingness into which 
my soul had lapsed, there have been moments 
when I have dreamed of success; there have been 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


133 


brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up 
remembrances which the lucid reason of a later 
epoch assures me could have had reference only to 
that condition of seeming unconsciousness. These 
shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall figures 
that lifted and bore me in silence down—down— 
still down—till a hideous dizziness oppressed me 
at the mere idea of the interminableness of the 
descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my 
heart, on account of that heart’s unnatural stillness. 
Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness 
throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a 
ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the 
limits of the limitless, and paused from the weari¬ 
someness of their toil. After this I call to mind 
flatness and dampness; and then all is madness — 
the madness of a memory which busies itself 
among forbidden things. 

Very suddenly there came back to my soul 
motion and sound—the tumultuous motion of the 
heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. 
Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again 
sound, and motion, and touch—a tingling sensation 
pervading my frame. Then the mere conscious¬ 
ness of existence, without thought—a condition 
which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought , 
and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to 
comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire 
to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival 
of soul and a successful effort to move. And now 
a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the 


134 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of 
the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that 
followed; of all that a later day and much earnest¬ 
ness of endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall. 

So far, I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I 
lay upon my back, unbound. I reached out my 
hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and 
hard. There I suffered it to remain for many 
minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what 
I could be. I longed, dared not, to employ my 
vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around 
me. It was not that I feared to look upon things 
horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should 
be nothing to see. At length, with a wild desper¬ 
ation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My 
worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The black¬ 
ness of eternal night encompassed me. I strug¬ 
gled for breath. The intensity of the darkness 
seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere 
was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made 
effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the 
inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that 
point to deduce my real condition. The sentence 
had passed; and it appeared to me that a very long 
interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a 
moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such 
a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in 
fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real exist¬ 
ence;—but where and in what state was I? The 
condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at 
the autos-da-fe , and one of these had been held 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


135 


on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I 
been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next 
sacrifice, which would not take place for many 
months? This I at once say could not be. Victims 
had been in immediate demand. Moreover, my 
dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at 
Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not alto¬ 
gether excluded. 

A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in 
torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period I 
once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon re¬ 
covering, I at once started to my feet, trembling 
convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms 
wildly above and around me in all directions. I 
felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I 
should be impeded by the walls of a tomb. Per¬ 
spiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold 
big beads upon my forehead. The agony of sus¬ 
pense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously 
moved forward, with my arms extended, and my 
eyes straining from their sockets in the hope of 
catching some faint ray of light. I proceeded for 
many paces; but still all was blackness and va¬ 
cancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident 
that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of 
fates. 

And now, as I still continued to step cautiously 
onward, there came thronging upon my recollection 
a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. 
Of the dungeons there had been strange things nar¬ 
rated—fables I had always deemed them—but yet 


136 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whis¬ 
per. Was I left to perish of starvation in the sub¬ 
terranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps 
even more fearful, awaited me? That the result 
would be death, and a death of more than cus¬ 
tomary bitterness, I knew too well the character of 
my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were 
all that occupied or distracted me. 

My outstretched hands at length encountered 
some solid obstruction. It was a wall, seemingly of 
stone masonry—very smooth, slimy, and cold. I 
followed it up; stepping with all the careful dis¬ 
trust with which certain antique narratives had 
inspired me. This process, however, afforded me 
no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my 
dungeon, as I might make its circuit and return to 
the point whence I set out without being aware of 
the fact, so perfectly uniform seemed the wall. I 
therefore sought the knife which had been in my 
pocket when led into the inquisitorial chamber; 
but it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for 
a wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing 
the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, 
so as to identify my point of departure. The dif¬ 
ficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in 
the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insu¬ 
perable. I tore a part of the hem from the robe 
and placed the fragment at full length, and at 
right angles to the wall. In groping my way around 
the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag 
upon completing the circuit. So, at least, I thought; 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


137 


but I had not counted upon the extent of the 
dungeon, or upon my own weakness. The ground 
was moist and slippery. I staggered onward for 
some time, when I stumbled and fell. My exces¬ 
sive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate; and 
sleep soon overtook me as I lay. 

Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I 
found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. 
I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this cir¬ 
cumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly 
afterward, I resumed my tour around the prison, 
and, with much toil, came at last upon the frag¬ 
ment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell, 
I had counted fifty-two paces, and, upon resuming 
my walk, I had counted forty-eight more—when 
I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a 
hundred paces; and, admitting two paces to the 
yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards 
in circuit. I had met, however, with many angles 
in the wall, and thus I could form no guess at the 
shape of the vault, for vault I could not help sup¬ 
posing it to be. 

I had little object—certainly no hope—in these 
researches; but a vague curiosity prompted me 
to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved 
to cross the area of the inclosure. At first, I pro¬ 
ceeded with extreme caution, for the floor, although 
seemingly of solid material, was treacherous with 
slime. At length, however, I took courage, and 
did not hesitate to step firmly—endeavoring to 
cross in as direct a line as possible. I had ad- 


138 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


vanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, 
when the remnant of the torn hem of my robe 
became entangled between my legs. I stepped on 
it, and fell violently on my face. 

In the confusion attending my fall, I did not 
immediately apprehend a somewhat startling cir¬ 
cumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, 
and while I still lay prostrate, arrested my atten¬ 
tion. It was this: my chin rested upon the floor of 
the prison, but my lips, and the upper portion of 
my head, although seemingly at a less elevation 
than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time, 
my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, 
and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose 
to my nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shud¬ 
dered to find that I had fallen at the very brink 
of a circular pit, whose extent, of course, I had 
no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping 
about the masonry just below the margin, I suc¬ 
ceeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let 
it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I heark¬ 
ened to its reverberations as it dashed against the 
sides of the chasm in its descent; at length, there 
was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud 
echoes. At the same moment, there came a sound 
resembling the quick opening and as rapid clos¬ 
ing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of 
light flashed suddenly through the gloom and as 
suddenly faded away. 

I saw clearly the doom which had been pre¬ 
pared for me and congratulated myself upon the 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


139 


timely accident by which I had escaped. Another 
step before my fall and the world had seen me no 
more. And the death just avoided was of that 
very character which I had regarded as fabulous 
and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisi¬ 
tion. To the victims of its tyranny there was the 
choice of death with its direst physical agonies or 
death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had 
been reserved for the latter. By long suffering 
my nerves had been unstrung until I trembled at 
the sound of my own voice and had become in 
every respect a fitting subject for the species of 
torture which awaited me. 

Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back 
to the wall—resolving there to perish rather than 
risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagina¬ 
tion now pictured many in various positions about 
the dungeon. In other conditions of mind, I might 
have had courage to end my misery at once, by a 
plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the 
veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I 
had read of these pits—that the sudden extinction 
of life formed no part of their most horrible plan. 

Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long 
hours, but at length I again slumbered. Upon 
arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf 
and a pitcher of water. A burning thirst con¬ 
sumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a draught. 
It must have been drugged—for scarcely had I 
drunk before I became irresistibly drowsy. A deep 
sleep fell upon me—a sleep like that of death. 


140 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


How long it lasted, of course I know not; but when, 
once again, I unclosed my eyes, the objects around 
me were visible. By a wild, sulphurous lustre, 
the origin of which I could not at first determine, 
I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the 
prison. 

In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The 
whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty- 
five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned 
me a world of vain trouble; vain indeed—for what 
could be of less importance, under the terrible cir¬ 
cumstances which environed me, than the mere 
dimensions of my dungeon? But my soul took 
a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in 
endeavors to account for the error I had committed 
in my measurement. The truth at length flashed 
upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had 
counted fifty-two paces, up to the period when I 
fell: I must then have been within a pace or two 
of the fragment of serge; in fact, I had nearly 
performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept— 
and, upon awaking, I must have returned upon 
my steps—thus supposing the circuit nearly double 
what it actually was. My confusion of mind pre¬ 
vented me from observing that I began my tour 
with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall 
to the right. 

I had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape 
of the inclosure. In feeling my way I had found 
many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great 
irregularity; so potent is the effect of total dark- 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


141 


ness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep! 
The angles were simply those of a few slight 
depressions, or niches, at odd intervals. The gen¬ 
eral shape of the prison was square. What I had 
taken for masonry seemed now to be iron, or some 
other metal, in huge plates, whose sutures or joints 
occasioned the depressions. The entire surface of 
this metallic inclosure was rudely daubed in all 
the hideous and repulsive devices to which the 
charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. 
The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with 
skeleton forms, and other more really fearful im¬ 
ages, overspread and disfigured the walls. I ob¬ 
served that the outlines of these monstrosities were 
sufficiently distinct, but that the colors seemed 
faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a 
damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too, 
which was of stone. In the centre yawned the 
circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped; but 
it was the only one in the dungeon. 

All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort— 
for my personal condition had been greatly changed 
during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at 
full length, on a species of low framework of wood. 
To this I was securely bound by a long strap re¬ 
sembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolu¬ 
tions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty 
only my head, and my left arm to such an extent, 
that I could, by dint of much exertion, supply my¬ 
self with food from an earthen dish which lay by 
my side on the floor. I saw, to my horror, that the 


142 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


pitcher had been removed. I say to my horror— 
for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This 
thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors 
to stimulate—for the food in the dish was meat 
pungently seasoned. 

Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my 
prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, 
and constructed much as the side walls. In one of 
its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole 
attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he 
is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a 
scythe, he held what, at a casual glance, I supposed 
to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such 
as we see on antique clocks. There was something, 
however, in the appearance of this machine which 
caused me to regard it more attentively. While I 
gazed directly upward at it (for its position was 
immediately over my own) I fancied that I saw it 
in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was 
confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course 
slow. I watched it for some minutes somewhat in 
fear, but more in wonder. Wearied at length with 
observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes upon 
the other objects in the cell. 

A slight noise attracted my notice, and, looking 
to the floor, I saw several enormous rats traversing 
it. They had issued from the well which lay just 
within view to my right. Even then, while I gazed, 
they came up in troops, hurriedly, with ravenous 
eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 143 

it required much effort and attention to scare them 
away. 

It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an 
hour (for I could take but imperfect note of time), 
before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then 
saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the 
pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. 
As a natural consequence its velocity was also much 
greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the 
idea that it had perceptibly descended . I now ob¬ 
served—with what horror it is needless to say— 
that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent 
of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn 
to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evi¬ 
dently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also, 
it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge 
into a solid and broad structure above. It was 
appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole 
hissed as it swung through the air. 

I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for 
me by monkish ingenuity in torture. My cogni¬ 
zance of the pit had become known to the inquisi¬ 
torial agents —the pit, whose horrors had been 
destined for so bold a recusant as myself —the pit, 
typical of hell and regarded by rumor as the Ultima 
Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into 
this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, 
and I knew that surprise, or entrapment into tor¬ 
ment, formed an important portion of all the gro- 
tesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed 


144 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl 
me into the abyss, and thus (there being no alter¬ 
native) a different and a milder destruction awaited 
me. Milder! I half smiled in my agony as I 
thought of such application of such a term. 

What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of 
horror more than mortal, during which I counted 
the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch 
—line by line—with a descent only appreciable at 
intervals that seemed ages—down and still down it 
came! Days passed—it might have been that many 
days passed—ere it swept so closely over me as to 
fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the sharp 
steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed—I 
wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy 
descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to 
force myself upward against the sweep of the fear¬ 
ful cimeter. And then I fell suddenly calm, and 
lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at 
some rare bawble. 

There was another interval of utter insensibility; 
it was brief; for, upon again lapsing into life, there 
had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. 
But it might have been long—for I knew there were 
demons who took note of my swoon, and who could 
have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my 
recovery, too, I felt very—oh! inexpressibly—sick 
and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid 
the agonies of that period, the human nature craved 
food. With painful effort I outstretched my left 
arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took posses- 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


145 


sion of the small remnant which had been spared 
me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my 
lips, there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought 
of joy—of hope. Yet what business had / with 
hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought— 
man has many such, which are never completed. I 
felt that it was of joy—of hope; but I felt also that 
it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled 
to perfect—to regain it. Long suffering had nearly 
annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was 
an imbecile—an idiot. 

The vibration of the pendulum was at right 
angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was 
designed to cross the region of the heart. It would 
fray the serge of my robe—it would return and 
repeat its operations—again—and again. Not¬ 
withstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some 
thirty feet or more), and the hissing vigor of its 
descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of 
iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, 
for several minutes, it would accomplish. And at 
this thought I paused. I dared not go further than 
this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity 
of attention—as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest 
here the descent of the steel. I forced myself to 
ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should 
pass across the garment—upon the peculiar thrill¬ 
ing sensation which the friction of cloth produces 
on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity 
until my teeth were on edge. 

Down—steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied 


146 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral 
velocity. To the right—to the left—far and wide 
—with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart, 
with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I alternately 
laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea 
grew predominant. 

Down—certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated 
within three inches of my bosom! I struggled vio¬ 
lently—furiously—to free my left arm. This was 
free only from the elbow to the hand. I could 
reach the latter, from the platter beside me, to my 
mouth, with great effort, but no further. Could I 
have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would 
have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. 
I might as well have attempted to arrest an ava¬ 
lanche! 

Down—still unceasingly—still inevitably down! 
I gasped and struggled at each vibration. I shrunk 
convulsively at its every sweep. My eyes followed 
its outward or upward whorls with the eagerness of 
the most unmeaning despair; they closed them¬ 
selves spasmodically at the descent, although death 
would have been a relief, oh, how unspeakable! 
Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a 
sinking of the machinery would precipitate that 
keen, glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope 
that prompted the nerve to quiver—the frame to 
shrink. It was hope —the hope that triumphs on 
the rack—that whispers to the death-condemned 
even in the dungeons of the Inquisition. 

I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


147 


bring the steel in actual contact with my robe—and 
with this observation there suddenly came over my 
spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. 
For the first time during many hours—or perhaps 
days— I thought. It now occurred to me that the 
bandage, or surcingle, which enveloped me, was 
unique. I was tied by no separate cord. The first 
stroke of the razor-like crescent athwart any portion 
of. the band would so detach it that it might be 
unwound from my person by means of my left 
hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity 
of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle, 
how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the 
minions of the torturer had not foreseen and pro¬ 
vided for this possibility? Was it probable that 
the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the 
pendulum? Dreading to find my faint and, as it 
seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated 
my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. 
The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close 
in all directions —save in the path of the destroying 
crescent. 

Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its 
original position, when there flashed upon my mind 
what I can not better describe than as the unformed 
half of that idea of deliverance to which I have 
previously alluded, and of which a moiety only 
floated indeterminately through my brain when I 
raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought 
was now present—feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely 
definite—but still entire. I proceeded at once, 


148 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its 
execution. 

For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low 
framework upon which I lay had been literally 
swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, raven¬ 
ous—their red eyes glaring upon me as if they 
waited but for motionlessness on my part to make 
me their prey. “To what food,” I thought, “have 
they been accustomed in the well?” 

They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to 
prevent them, all but a small remnant of the con¬ 
tents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see¬ 
saw or wave of the hand about the platter; and, at 
length, the unconscious uniformity of the movement 
deprived it of effect. In their voracity, the vermin 
frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. 
With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which 
now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage 
wherever I could reach it; then, raising my hand 
from the floor, I lay breathlessly still. 

At first, the ravenous animals were startled and 
terrified at the change—at the cessation of move¬ 
ment. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought 
the well. But this was only for a moment. I had 
not counted in vain upon their voracity. Observing 
that I remained without motion, one or two of the 
boldest leaped upon the framework, and smelt at 
the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general 
rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh 
troops. They clung to the wood—they overran it, 
and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The 



“AT A WAVE OF MY HAND MY DELIVERERS 
HURRIED TUMULTUOUSLY AWAY” 




EDGAR ALLAN POE 


149 


measured movement of the pendulum disturbed 
them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied 
themselves with the anointed bandage. They 
pressed—they swarmed upon me in ever accumu¬ 
lating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their 
cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their 
thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world 
has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a 
heavy clamminess, my heart. Yet one minute, and 
I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I 
perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew 
that in more than one place it must be already 
severed. With a more than human resolution I 
lay still. 

Nor had I erred in my calculations—nor had I 
endured in vain. I at length felt that I was free . 
The surcingle hung in ribbons from my body. But 
the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon 
my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. 
It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again 
it swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through 
every nerve. But the moment of escape had 
arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers 
hurried tumultuously away. With a steady move¬ 
ment—cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow—I 
slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond 
the reach of the cimeter. For the moment, at least, 
I was free . 

Free!—and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I 
had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of 
horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the 


150 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 


motion of the hellish machine ceased, and I beheld 
it drawn up, by some invisible force, through the 
ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately 
to heart. My every motion was undoubtedly 
watched. Free!—I had but escaped death in one 
form of agony, to be delivered unto worse than 
death in some other. With that thought I rolled my 
eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that 
hemmed me in. Something unusual—some change 
which, at first, I could not appreciate distinctly—it 
was obvious, had taken place in the apartment. 
For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling 
abstraction, I busied myself in vain, unconnected 
conjecture. During this period, I became aware, 
for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous 
light which illumined the cell. It proceeded from 
a fissure, about half an inch in width, extending 
entirely around the prison at the base of the walls, 
which thus appeared, and were completely sepa¬ 
rated from the floor. I endeavored, but of course 
in vain, to look through the aperture. 

As I rose from the attempt, the mystery of the 
alteration in the chamber broke at once upon my 
understanding. I have observed that, although the 
outlines of the figures upon the walls were suffi¬ 
ciently distinct, yet the colors seemed blurred and 
indefinite. These colors had now assumed, and 
were momentarily assuming, a startling and most 
intense brilliancy, that gave to the spectral and 
fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have 
thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon 


EDGAR ALLAN POE 


151 


eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon 
me in a thousand directions, where none had been 
visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre 
of a fire that I could not force my imagination to 
regard as unreal. 

Unreal !—even while I breathed there came to 
my nostrils the breath of the vapor of heated 
iron! A suffocating odor pervaded the prison! A 
deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that 
glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson 
diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. 
I panted! I gasped for breath! There could be 
no doubt of the design of my tormentors—oh! most 
unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! I shrank 
from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. 
Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that im¬ 
pended, the idea of the coolness of the well came 
over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly 
brink. I threw my straining vision below. The 
glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost 
recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit 
refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw. 
At length it forced—it wrestled its way into my 
soul—it burned itself in upon my shuddering 
reason. Oh! for a voice to speak!—oh! horror! 
—oh! any horror but this! With a shriek, I rushed 
from the margin, and buried my face in my hands 
—weeping bitterly. 

The heat rapidly increased, and once again I 
looked up, shuddering as with a fit of the ague. 
There had been a second change in the cell—and 


152 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 

now the change was obviously in the form. As 
before, it was in vain that I at first endeavored to 
appreciate or understand what was taking place. 
But not long was I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial 
vengeance had been hurried by my twofold escape, 
and there was to be no more dallying with the King 
of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw 
that two of its iron angles were now acute—two, 
consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference 
quickly increased with a low rumbling or moan¬ 
ing sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted 
its form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration 
stopped not here—I neither hoped nor desired it 
to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my 
bosom as a garment of eternal peace. “Death,” 
I said, “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! 
might I not have known that into the pit it was the 
object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I 
resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand 
its pressure? And now flatter and flatter grew the 
lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for 
contemplation. Its centre, and of course its great¬ 
est width, came just over the yawning gulf. I 
shrank back—but the closing walls pressed me 
resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and 
writhing body there was no longer an inch of foot¬ 
hold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled 
no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in 
one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I 
felt that I tottered upon the brink—I averted my 
eyes- 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 


153 


There was a discordant hum of human voices! 
There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! 
There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thun¬ 
ders! The fiery walls rushed back! An out¬ 
stretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, 
into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The 
French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition 
was in the hands of its enemies. 


THE VAMPIRE 


BRAM STOKER* 

This extract is from the most remarkable and thrilling tale 
embodying supernatural motives that has appeared in modern 
times. Count Dracula—a monster in human form—a true vam¬ 
pire—one who had “been dead many times and had learned the 
secrets of the grave,” as the old legends put it, leaves his castle in 
far Gallicia and comes to London, where, under the name of Count 
de Ville, he buys a house in Piccadilly and settles down to pursue 
his fiendish career. He is not long in finding a victim in the per¬ 
son of the beautiful Mrs. Harker. Her husband and a few chosen 
friends under the guidance of Professor Van Helsing, a man of 
profound knowledge of occult sciences, track him to his lair in 
London with the intention to kill him. He escapes them almost 
miraculously and flees back home to his castle, to which they fol¬ 
low him, and finally destroy him there.— Editor . 

I 

Letter, Mitchell, Sons and Candy 
to Lord Godalming 


“1 October. 


“My Lord , 

“We are at all times only too happy to meet your 
wishes. We beg, with regard to the desire of your 
Lordship, expressed by Mr. Harker on your behalf, 
to supply the following information concerning the 
sale and purchase of No. 347, Piccadilly. The 
original vendors are the executors of the late Mr. 
Archibald Winter-Suffield. The purchaser is a 
foreign nobleman, Count de Ville, who effected 


♦ From “Dracula.” Doubleday, Page & Company. 

154 


BRAM STOKER 


155 


the purchase himself paying the purchase money 
in notes ‘over the counter,’ if your Lordship will 
pardon us using so vulgar an expression. Beyond 
this we know nothing whatever of him. 

“We are, my Lord, 

Your Lordship’s humble servants, 

“Mitchell, Sons & Candy.” 

II 

Renfield’s Narrative 

“He came up to the window in the mist, as I 
had seen him often before; but he was solid then— 
not a ghost, and his eyes were fierce like a man’s 
when angry. He was laughing with his red mouth; 
the sharp white teeth glinted in the moonlight when 
he turned to look back over the belt of trees, to 
where the dogs were barking. I wouldn’t ask him 
to come in at first, though I knew he wanted to 
—just as he had wanted all along. Then he began 
promising me things—not in words but by doing 
them.” He was interrupted by a word from the 
Professor: 

“How?” 

“By making them happen; just as he used to 
send in the flies when the sun was shining. Great 
big fat ones with steel and sapphire on their wings; 
and big moths, in the night, with skull and cross- 
bones on their backs.” Van Helsing nodded to 
him as he whispered to me unconsciously: 

“The Ackerordia Aitetropos of the Sphinges — 


156 


THE VAMPIRE 


what you call the ‘Death’s-head Moth?’ ” The 
patient went on without stopping. 

“Then he began to whisper: ‘Rats, rats, rats! 
Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every 
one a life; and dogs to eat them, and cats too. All 
lives! all red blood, with years of life in it; and 
not merely buzzing flies!’ I laughed at him, for I 
wanted to see what he could do. Then the dogs 
howled, away beyond the dark trees in His house. 
He beckoned me to the window. I got up and 
looked out, and He raised his hands, and seemed 
to call out without using any words. A dark mass 
spread over the grass, coming on like the shape of a 
flame of fire; and then He moved the mist to the 
right and left, and I could see that there were 
thousands of rats with their eyes blazing red—like 
His, only smaller. He held up his hand, and they 
all stopped; and I thought He seemed to be saying: 
‘All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more 
and greater, through countless ages, if you will 
fall down and worship me!’ And then a red cloud, 
like the colour of blood, seemed to close over my 
eyes; and before I knew what I was doing, I found 
myself opening the sash and saying to Him: ‘Come 
in, Lord and Master!’ The rats were all gone, but 
He slid into the room through the sash, though it 
was only open an inch wide—just as the Moon 
herself has often come in through the tiniest crack, 
and has stood before me in all her size and 
splendour.” 

His voice was weaker, so I moistened his lips 


BRAM STOKER 


157 


with the brandy again, and he continued; hut it 
seemed as though his memory had gone on work¬ 
ing in the interval for his story was further ad¬ 
vanced. I was about to call him back to the point, 
but Van Helsing whispered to me: “Let him go on. 
Do not interrupt him; he cannot go back, and 
maybe could not proceed at all if once he lost the 
thread of his thought.” He proceeded: 

“All day I waited to hear from him, but he did 
not send me anything, not even a blow-fly, and 
when the moon got up I was pretty angry with him. 
When he slid in through the window, though it was 
shut, and did not even knock, I got mad with him. 
He sneered at me, and his white face looked out 
of the mist with his red eyes gleaming, and he went 
on as though he owned the whole place, and I was 
no one. He didn’t even smell the same as he went 
by me. I couldn’t hold him. I thought that, some¬ 
how, Mrs. Harker had come into the room.” 

The two men sitting on the bed stood up and 
came over, standing behind him so that he could 
not see them, but where they could hear better. 
They were both silent, but the Professor started and 
quivered; his face, however, grew grimmer and 
sterner still. Renfield went on without noticing: 

“When Mrs. Harker came in to see me this after¬ 
noon she wasn’t the same; it was like tea after the 
teapot had been watered.” Here we all moved, but 
no one said a word; he went on: 

“I didn’t know that she was here till she spoke; 
and she didn’t look the same. I don’t care for the 


158 


THE VAMPIRE 


pale people; I like them with lots of blood in them, 
and hers had all seemed to have run out. I didn’t 
think of it at the time; but when she went away I 
began to think, and it made me mad to know that 
He had been taking the life out of her.” I could 
feel that the rest quivered, as I did; but we remained 
otherwise still. “So when He came to-night I was 
ready for Him. I saw the mist stealing in, and I 
grabbed it tight. I had heard that madmen have 
unnatural strength; and as I knew I was a madman 
—at times, anyhow—I resolved to use my power. 
Ay, and He felt it, too, for He had to come out of 
the mist to struggle with me. I held tight; and I 
thought I was going to win, for I didn’t mean Him 
to take any more of her life, till I saw His eyes. 
They burned into me, and my strength became like 
water. He slipped through it, and when I tried 
to cling to Him, He raised me up and flung me 
down. There was a red cloud before me, and a 
noise like thunder, and the mist seemed to steal 
away under the door.” 


Ill 

The Vampire 

His voice was becoming fainter and his breath 
more stertorous. Van Helsing stood up instinc¬ 
tively. 

“We know the worst now,” he said. “He is here, 
and we know his purpose. It may not be too late. 
Let us be armed—the same as we were the other 


BRAM STOKER 


159 


night, but lose no time; there is not an instant to 
spare.” There was no need to put our fear, nay 
our conviction, into words—we shared them in 
common. We all hurried and took from our rooms 
the same things that we had when we entered the 
Count’s house. The Professor had his ready, and 
as we met in the corridor he pointed to them signifi¬ 
cantly as he said:— 

“They never leave me; and they shall not till 
this unhappy business is over. Be wise also, my 
friends. It is no common enemy that we deal with. 
Alas! alas! that that dear Madam Mina should 
suffer!” He stopped; his voice was breaking, and 
I do not know if rage or terror predominated in my 
own heart. 

Outside the Harkers’ door we paused. Art and 
Quincey held back, and the latter said:— 

“Should we disturb her?” 

“We must,” said Van Helsing grimly. “If the 
door be locked, I shall break it in.” 

“May it not frighten her terribly? It is unusual 
to break into a lady’s room!” 

Van Helsing said solemnly: 

“You are always right; but this is life and death. 
All chambers are alike to the doctor; and even 
were they not they are all as one to me tonight. 
Friend John, when I turn the handle, if the door 
does not open, do you put your shoulder down 
and shove; and you too, my friends. Now!” 

He turned the handle as he spoke, but the door 
did not yield. We threw ourselves against it; with 


160 


THE VAMPIRE 


a crash it burst open, and we almost fell headlong 
into the room. The Professor did actually fall, 
and I saw across him as he gathered himself up 
from hands and knees. What I saw appalled me. 
I felt my hair rise like bristles on the back of my 
neck, and my heart seemed to stand still. 

The moonlight was so bright that through the 
thick yellow blind the room was light enough to see. 
On the bed beside the window lay Jonathan Harker, 
his face flushed and breathing heavily as though 
in a stupor. Kneeling on the near edge of the bed 
facing outwards was the white-clad figure of his 
wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in 
black. His face was turned from us, but the instant 
we saw we all recognised the Count—in every way, 
even to the scar on his forehead. With his left 
hand he held both Mrs. Harker’s hands, keeping 
them away with her arms at full tension; his right 
hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing 
her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress 
was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled 
down the man’s bare breast which was shown by 
his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had 
a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s 
nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink. 
As we burst into the room, the Count turned his 
face, and the hellish look that I had heard described 
seemed to leap into it. His eyes flamed red with 
devilish passion; the great nostrils of the white 
aquiline nose opened wide and quivered at the 
edge; and the white sharp teeth, behind the full lips 



THE COUNT TURNED HIS FACE, AND THE 
HELLISH LOOK . . . SEEMED TO LEAP 
INTO IT” 

























































































* 













BRAM STOKER 


161 


of the blood-dripping mouth, champed together like 
those of a wild beast. With a wrench, which threw 
his victim back upon the bed as though hurled from 
a height, he turned and sprang at us. But by this 
time the Professor had gained his feet, and was 
holding towards him the envelope which contained 
the Sacred Wafer. The Count suddenly stopped, 
just as poor Lucy had done outside the tomb, and 
cowered back. Further and further back he cow¬ 
ered, as we, lifting our crucifixes, advanced. The 
moonlight suddenly failed, as a great black cloud 
sailed across the sky; and when the gaslight sprang 
up under Quincey’s match, we saw nothing but a 
faint vapor. This, as we looked, trailed under 
the door, which with the recoil from its bursting 
open, had swung back to its old position. Van 
Helsing, Art, and I moved forward to Mrs. Harker, 
who by this time had drawn her breath and with 
it had given a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so 
despairing that it seems to me now that it will ring 
in my ears till my dying day. For a few seconds 
she lay in her helpless attitude and disarray. Her 
face was ghastly, with a pallor which was accentu¬ 
ated by the blood which smeared her lips and 
cheeks and chin; from her throat trickled a thin 
stream of blood; her eyes were mad with terror. 
Then she put before her face her poor crushed 
hands, which bore on their whiteness the red mark 
of the Count’s terrible grip, and from behind them 
came a low desolate wail which made the terrible 
scream seem only the quick expression of an end- 


162 


THE VAMPIRE 


less grief. Van Helsing stepped forward and drew 
the coverlet gently over her body, whilst Art, after 
looking at her face for an instant despairingly, 
ran out of the room. Van Helsing whispered to 
me:— 

“Jonathan is in a stupor such as we know the 
Vampire can produce. We can do nothing with 
poor Madam Mina for a few moments till she 
recovers herself; I must wake him!” He dipped 
the end of a towel in cold water and with it began 
to flick him on the face, his wife all the while 
holding her face between her hands and sobbing 
in a way that was heart-breaking to hear. I raised 
the blind, and looked out of the window. There 
was much moonshine; and as I looked I could see 
Quincey Morris run across the lawn and hide him¬ 
self in the shadow of a great yew tree. It puzzled 
me to think why he was doing this; but at the instant 
I heard Harker’s quick exclamation as he woke to 
partial consciousness, and turned to the bed. On 
his face, as there might well be, was a look of wild 
amazement. He seemed dazed for a few seconds, 
and then full consciousness seemed to burst upon 
him all at once, and he started up. His wife was 
aroused by the quick movement, and turned to him 
with her arms stretched out, as though to embrace 
him; instantly, however, she drew them in again, 
and putting her elbows together, held her hands 
before her face, and shuddered until the bed be¬ 
neath her shook. 

“In God’s name what does this mean?” Harker 


BRAM STOKER 


163 


cried out, “Dr. Seward, Dr. Van Helsing, what is 
it? What has happened? What is wrong? Mina, 
dear, what is it? What does that blood mean? My 
God, my God! has it come to this!” and, raising 
himself to his knees, he beat his hands wildly to¬ 
gether. “Good God help us! help her! oh, help 
her!” With a quick movement he jumped from 
bed, and began to pull on his clothes—all the man 
in him awake at the need for instant exertion. 
“What has happened? Tell me all about it?” he 
cried without pausing. “Dr. Van Helsing, you love 
Mina, I know. Oh, do something to save her. It 
cannot have gone too far yet. Guard her while I 
look for him!" His wife, through her terror and 
horror and distress, saw some sure danger to him: 
instantly forgetting her own grief, she seized hold 
of him and cried out: 

“No! no! Jonathan, you must not leave me. I 
have suffered enough tonight, God knows, with¬ 
out the dread of his harming you. You must stay 
with me. Stay with these friends who will watch 
over you!” Her expression became frantic as she 
spoke; and, he yielding to her, she pulled him 
down sitting on the bed side, and clung to him 
fiercely. 

Van Helsing and I tried to calm them both. The 
Professor held up his little golden crucifix, and 
said with wonderful calmness:— 

“Do not fear, my dear. We are here; and whilst 
this is close to you no foul thing can approach. 
You are safe for tonight; and we must be calm 


164 


THE VAMPIRE 


and take counsel together.” She shuddered and 
was silent, holding down her head on her husband’s 
breast. When she raised it, his white night-robe 
was stained with blood where her lips had touched, 
and where the thin open wound in her neck had 
sent forth drops. The instant she saw it she drew 
back, with a low wail, and whispered, amidst chok¬ 
ing sobs:— 

“Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss 
him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who 
am now his worst enemy, and whom he may 
have most cause to fear.” To this he spoke out 
resolutely:— 

“Nonsense, Mina. It is a shame to me to hear 
such a word. I would not hear it of you; and I 
shall not hear it from you. May God judge me by 
my deserts, and punish me with more bitter suffer¬ 
ing than even this hour, if by any act or will of 
mine anything ever come between us!” He put 
out his arms and folded her to his breast; and for 
a while she lay there sobbing. He looked at us 
over her bowed head, with eyes that blinked damply 
above his quivering nostrils; his mouth was set as 
steel. After a while her sobs became less frequent 
and more faint, and then he said to me, speaking 
with a studied calmness which I felt tried his nerv¬ 
ous power to the utmost:— 

“And now, Dr. Seward, tell me all about it. Too 
well I know the broad fact; tell me all that has 
been.” I told him exactly what had happened, 
and he listened with seeming impassiveness; but 


BRAM STOKER 


165 


his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told 
how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his 
wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her 
mouth to the open wound in his breast. It inter¬ 
ested me, even at that moment, to see, that, whilst 
the face of white set passion worked convulsively 
over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lov¬ 
ingly stroked the ruffled hair. Just as I had fin¬ 
ished, Quincey and Godaiming knocked at the door. 
They entered in obedience to our summons. Van 
Helsing looked at me questioningly. I understood 
him to mean if we were to take advantage of their 
coming to divert if possible the thoughts of the 
unhappy husband and wife from each other and 
from themselves; so on nodding acquiescence to 
him he asked them what they had seen or done. 
To which Lord Godaiming answered: 

“I could not see him anywhere in the passage, 
or in any of our rooms. I looked in the study but, 
though he had been there, he had gone. He had, 

however-” He stopped suddenly looking at 

the poor drooping figure on the bed. Van Helsing 
said gravely:— 

“Go on, friend Arthur. We want here no more 
concealments. Our hope now is in knowing all. 
Tell freely!” So Art went on:— 

“He had been there, and though it could only 
have been for a few seconds, he made rare hay of 
the place. All the manuscript had been burned, 
and the blue flames were flickering amongst the 
white ashes; the cylinders of your phonograph too 



166 


THE VAMPIRE 


were thrown on the fire, and the wax had helped 
the flames.” Here I interrupted. “Thank God 
there is the other copy in the safe!” His face lit 
for a moment, but fell again as he went on; “I ran 
down stairs then, but could see no sign of him. I 
looked into Renfield’s room; but there was no trace 
there except—!” Again he paused. “Go on,” 
said Harker hoarsely; so he bowed his head and 
moistening his lips with his tongue, added: “except 
that the poor fellow is dead.” Mrs. Harker raised 
her head, looking from one to the other of us she 
said solemnly:— 

“God’s will be done!” I could not but feel that 
Art was keeping back something; but, as I took it 
that it was with a purpose, I said nothing. Van 
Helsing turned to Morris and asked:— 

“And you, friend Quincey, have you any to 
tell?” 

“A little,” he answered. “It may be much eventu¬ 
ally, but at present I can’t say. I thought it well 
to know if possible where the Count would go when 
he left the house. I did not see him; but I saw a 
bat rise from Renfield’s window, and flap westward. 
I expected to see him in some shape go back to 
Carfax; but he evidently sought some other lair. 
He will not be back to-night; for the sky is redden¬ 
ing in the east, and the dawn is close. We must 
work to-morrow!” 

He said the latter words through his shut teeth. 
For a space of perhaps a couple of minutes there 
was silence, and I could fancy that I could hear 


BRAM STOKER 


167 


the sound of our hearts beating; then Van Hels- 
ing said, placing his hand very tenderly on Mrs. 
Harker’s head:— 

“And now, Madam Mina—poor, dear, dear Mad¬ 
am Mina—tell us exactly what happened. God 
knows that I do not want that you be pained; but 
it is need that we know all. For now more than 
ever has all work to be done quick and sharp, and 
in deadly earnest. The day is close to us that 
must end all, if it may be so; and now is the chance 
that we may live and learn.” 

The poor, dear lady shivered, and I could see 
the tension of her nerves as she clasped her hus¬ 
band closer to her and bent her head lower and 
lower still on his breast. Then she raised her head 
proudly, and held out one hand to Van Helsing 
who took it in his, and, after stooping and kissing 
it reverently, held it fast. The other hand was 
locked in that of her husband, who held his other 
arm thrown round her protectingly. After a pause 
in which she was evidently ordering her thoughts, 
she began:— 

“I took the sleeping draught which you had so 
kindly given me, but for a long time it did not act. 
I seemed to become more wakeful, and myriads of 
horrible fancies began to crowd in upon my mind 
—all of them connected with death, and vampires; 
with blood, and pain, and trouble.” Her husband 
involuntarily groaned as she turned to him and 
said lovingly: “Do not fret, dear. You must be 
brave and strong, and help me through the horrible 


168 


THE VAMPIRE 


task. If you only knew what an effort it is to me 
to tell of this fearful thing at all, you would under¬ 
stand how much I need your help. Well, I saw I 
must try to help the medicine to do its work with 
my will, if it was to do me any good, so I resolutely 
set myself to sleep. Sure enough sleep must soon 
have come to me, for I remember no more. Jona¬ 
than coming in had not waked me, for he lay by 
my side when next I remember. There was in the 
room the same thin white mist that I had before 
noticed. But I forget now if you know of this; 
you will find it in my diary which I shall show you 
later. I felt the same vague terror which had come 
to me before, and the same sense of some presence. 
I turned to wake Jonathan, but found that he slept 
so soundly that it seemed as if it was he who had 
taken the sleeping draught, and not I. I tried, but 
I could not wake him. This caused me a great 
fear, and I looked around terrified. Then indeed, 
my heart sank within me: beside the bed, as if he 
had stepped out of the mist—or rather as if the 
mist had turned into his figure, for it had entirely 
disappeared—stood a tall, thin man, all in black. 
I knew him at once from the description of the 
others. The waxen face; the high aquiline nose, 
on which the light fell in a thin while line; the 
parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing 
between; and the red eyes that I had seemed to see 
in the sunset on the windows of St. Mary’s Church 
at Whitby. I knew, too, the red scar on his fore- 


BRAM STOKER 


169 


head where Jonathan had struck him. For an 
instant my heart stood still, and I would have 
screamed out, only that I was paralysed. In the 
pause he spoke in a sort of keen, cutting whisper, 
pointing as he spoke to Jonathan: 

64 ‘Silence! If you make a sound I shall take 
him and dash his brains out before your very eyes.’ 
I was appalled and was too bewildered to do or 
say anything. With a mocking smile, he placed 
one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, 
bared my throat with the other, saying as he did 
so; ‘First, a little refreshment to reward my exer¬ 
tions. You may as well be quiet; it is not the first 
time, or the second, that your veins have appeased 
my thirst!’ I was bewildered, and, strangely 
enough, I did not want to hinder him. I suppose 
it is a part of the horrible curse that such is, when 
his touch is on his victim. And oh, my God, my 
God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon 
my throat!” Her husband groaned again. She 
clasped his hand harder, and looked at him pity¬ 
ingly, as if he were the injured one, and went on:— 

“I felt my strength fading away, and I was in a 
half swoon. How long this horrible thing lasted 
I know not; but it seemed that a long time must 
have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneer¬ 
ing mouth away. I saw it drip with the fresh 
blood!” The remembrance seemed for a while to 
overpower her, and she drooped and would have 
sunk down but for her husband’s sustaining arm. 


170 THE VAMPIRE 

With a great effort she recovered herself and went 
on:— 

“Then he spoke to me mockingly, ‘And so you, 
like the others, would play your brains against 
mine. You would help these men to hunt me and 
frustrate me in my designs! You know now, and 
they know in part already, and will know in full 
before long, what it is to cross my path. They 
should have kept their energies for use closer to 
home. Whilst they played wits against me— 
against me who commanded nations, and intrigued 
for them, and fought for them hundreds of years 
before they were born—I was countermining them. 
And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, 
flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; 
my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall be 
later on my companion and my helper. You shall 
be avenged in turn; for not one of them but shall 
minister to your needs. But as yet you are to be 
punished for what you have done. You have aided 
in thwarting me; now you shall come to my call. 
When my brain says “Come!” to you, you shall 
cross land or sea to do my bidding; and to that 
end this!’ With that he pulled open his shirt, and 
with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his 
breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he 
took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, 
and with the other seized my neck and pressed my 
mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate 
or swallow some of the—Oh my God! my God! 
what have I done? What have I done to deserve 


BRAM STOKER 


171 


such a fate, I who have tried to walk in meekness 
and righteousness all my days. God pity me! Look 
down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril; 
and in mercy pity those to whom she is dear!” 
Then she began to rub her lips as though to cleanse 
them from pollution. 

As she was telling her terrible story, the eastern 
sky began to quicken, and everything became more 
and more clear. Harker was still and quiet; but 
over his face, as the awful narrative went on, came 
a grey look which deepened and deepened in the 
morning light, till when the first red streak of the 
coming dawn shot up, the flesh stood darkly out 
against the whitening hair. 

We have arranged that one of us is to stay within 
call of the unhappy pair till we can meet together 
and arrange about taking action. 

Of this I am sure: the sun rises to-day on no 
more miserable house in all the great round of 
its daily course. 


THE AVENGERS 

A. CONAN DOYLE* 

I 

In the central portion of the great North Ameri¬ 
can Continent there lies an arid and repulsive 
desert, which for many a long year served as a bar¬ 
rier against the advance of civilization. From the 
Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellow¬ 
stone river in the north to the Colorado upon the 
south, is a region of desolation and silence. Nor 
is nature always in one mood throughout this grim 
district. It comprises snow-capped and lofty moun¬ 
tains, and dark and gloomy valleys. There are 
swift-flowing rivers which dash through jagged can¬ 
yons; and there are enormous plains, which in 
winter are white with snow, and in summer are 
gray with the saline alkali dust. They all preserve, 
however, the common characteristics of barrenness, 
inhospitality, and misery. 

There are no inhabitants of this land of despair. 
A band of Pawnees or of Blackfeet may occasion¬ 
ally traverse it in order to reach other hunting- 
grounds, but the hardiest of the braves are glad 
to lose sight of those awesome plains, and to find 
themselves once more upon the prairies. The 

* From “A Study in Scarlet.” 

172 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


173 


coyote skulks among the scrub, the buzzard flaps 
heavily through the air, and the clumsy grizzly 
bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and picks 
up such sustenance as it can among the rocks. 
These are the sole dwellers in the wilderness. 

In the whole world there can be no more dreary 
view than that from the northern slope of the Sierra 
Blanco. As far as the eye can reach stretches the 
great flat plain-land, all dusted over with patches 
of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the dwarf¬ 
ish chapparal bushes. On the extreme verge of the 
horizon lies a long chain of mountain-peaks, with 
their rugged summits flecked with snow. In this 
great stretch of country there is no sign of life, nor 
of anything appertaining to life. There is no bird 
in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the 
dull, gray earth—above all, there is absolute 
silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of 
a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but 
silence—complete and heart-subduing silence. 

It has been said that there is nothing appertain¬ 
ing to life upon the broad plain. That is hardly 
true. Looking down from the Sierra Blanco, one 
sees a pathway traced out across the desert, which 
winds away and is lost in the extreme distance. It 
is rutted with wheels and trodden down by the feet 
of many adventurers. Here and there are scattered 
white objects which glisten in the sun, and stand 
out against the dull deposit of alkali. Approach, 
and examine them! They are bones; some large 
and coarse, others smaller and more delicate. The 


174 


THE AVENGERS 


former have belonged to oxen, and the latter to 
men. For fifteen hundred miles one may trace 
this ghastly caravan route by these scattered re¬ 
mains of those who had fallen by the wayside. 

Looking down on this very scene there stood 
upon the 4th of May, 1847, a solitary traveler. 
His appearance was such that he might have been 
the very genius or demon of the region. An ob¬ 
server would have found it difficult to say whether 
he was nearer to forty or sixty. His face was lean 
and haggard, and the brown, parchment-like skin 
was drawn tightly over the projecting bones; his 
long, brown hair and beard were all flecked and 
dashed with white; his eyes were sunken in his 
head and burned with an unnatural lustre, while 
the hand which grasped his rifle was hardly more 
fleshy than that of a skeleton. As he stood, he 
leaned upon his weapon for support, and yet his 
tall figure and the massive framework of his bones 
suggested a wiry and vigorous constitution. His 
gaunt face, however, and his clothes, which hung 
so baggily over his shrivelled limbs, proclaimed 
what it was that gave him that senile and decrepit 
appearance. The man was dying—dying from 
hunger and thirst. 

He had toiled painfully down the ravine, and 
on to this little elevation, in the vain hope of seeing 
some signs of water. Now the great salt plain 
stretched before his eyes, and the distant belt of 
savage mountains, without a sign anywhere of plant 
or tree, which might indicate the presence of mois- 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


175 


ture. In all that broad landscape there was no 
gleam of hope. North, and east, and west he 
looked with wild, questioning eyes, and then he 
realized that his wanderings had come to an end, 
and that there, on that barren crag, he was about 
to die. 

“Why not here, as well as in a feather bed, 
twenty years hence,” he muttered, as he seated him¬ 
self in the shelter of a bowlder. 

Before sitting down he had deposited upon the 
ground his useless rifle, and also a large bundle 
tied up in a gray shawl, which he had carried slung 
over his right shoulder. It appeared to be some¬ 
what too heavy for his strength, for, in lowering it, 
it came down on the ground with some little vio¬ 
lence. Instantly there broke from the gray parcel 
a little moaning cry, and from it there protruded 
a small, scared face, with very bright brown eyes, 
and two little speckled dimpled fists. 

“You’ve hurt me,” said a childish voice, re¬ 
proachfully. 

“Have I, though?” the man answered, peni¬ 
tently; “I didn’t go for to do it.” 

As he spoke he unwrapped the gray shawl and 
extricated a pretty little girl of about five years 
of age, whose dainty shoes and smart pink frock, 
with its little linen apron, all bespoke a mother’s 
care. The child was pale and wan, but her healthy 
arms and legs showed that she had suffered less 
than her companion. 

“How is it now?” he answered, anxiously, for 


176 


THE AVENGERS 


she was still rubbing the towsy golden curls which 
covered the back of her head. 

“Kiss it and make it well,” she said, with per¬ 
fect gravity, showing the injured part up to him. 
“That’s what mother used to do. Where’s 
mother?” 

“Mother’s gone. I guess you’ll see her before 
long.” 

“Gone, eh!” said the little girl. “Funny she 
didn’t say good-by; she ’most always did if she was 
just goin’ over to auntie’s for tea, and now she’s 
been away for three days. Say, it’s awful dry, 
ain’t it? Ain’t there no water nor nothing to eat?” 

“No, there ain’t nothing, dearie. You’ll just 
need to be patient awhile, and then you’ll be all 
right. Put your head up agin me, like that, and 
then you’ll feel better. It ain’t easy to talk when 
your lips is like leather, but I guess I’d best let 
you know how the cards lie. What’s that you’ve 
got?” 

“Pretty things! fine things!” cried the little girl, 
enthusiastically, holding up two glittering frag¬ 
ments of mica. “When we goes back to home I’ll 
give them to brother Bob.” 

“You’ll see prettier things than them soon,” 
said the man, confidently. “You just wait a bit. 
I was going to tell you, though—you remember 
when we left the river?” 

“Oh, yes.” 

“Well, we reckoned we’d strike another river 
soon, d’ye see. But there was somethin’ wrong; 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


177 


compasses, or map, or somethin’, and it didn’t 
turn up. Water ran out. Just except a little drop 
for the likes of you and—and”- 

“And you couldn’t wash yourself,” interrupted 
his companion, gravely, staring up at his grimy 
visage. 

“No, nor drink. And Mr. Bender, he was the 
first to go, and then Indian Pete, and then Mrs. 
McGregor, and then Johnny Hones, and then, 
dearie, your mother.” 

“Then mother’s a deader, too,” cried the little 
girl, dropping her face in her pinafore and sob¬ 
bing bitterly. 

“Yes; they all went except you and me. Then 
I thought there was some chance of water in this 
direction, so I heaved you over my shoulder and 
we tramped it together. It don’t seem as though 
we’ve improved matters. There’s an almighty small 
chance for us now!” 

“Do you mean that we are going to die, too?” 
asked the child, checking her sobs, and raising 
her tear-stained face. 

“I guess that’s about the size of it.” 

“Why didn’t you say so before?” she said, laugh¬ 
ing gleefully. “You gave me such a fright. Why, 
of course, now as long as we die we’ll be with 
mother again.” 

“Yes, you will, dearie.” 

“And you, too—I’ll tell her how awful good 
you’ve been. I’ll bet she meets us at the door of 
heaven with a big pitcher of water, and a lot of 



178 


THE AVENGERS 


buckwheat cakes, hot, and toasted on both sides, 
like Bob and me was fond of. How long will it 
be first?” 

“I don’t know—not very long.” 

The man’s eyes were fixed on the northern hori¬ 
zon. In the blue vault of heaven there appeared 
three little specks which increased in size every 
moment, so rapidly did they approach. They 
speedily resolved themselves into three large brown 
birds, which circled over the heads of the two wan¬ 
derers, and then settled upon some rocks which 
overlooked them. They were buzzards, the vul¬ 
tures of the West, whose coming is the forerunner 
of death. 

“Cocks and hens,” cried the little girl, gleefully, 
pointing at their ill-omened forms, and clapping 
her hands to make them rise. “Say, did God make 
this country?” 

“In course He did,” said her companion, rather 
startled by this unexpected question from the small 
child. 

“He made the country down in Illinois, and 
He made the Missouri,” the little girl continued. 
“I guess somebody else made the country in these 
parts. It’s not nearly so well done. They forgot 
the water and the trees.” 

“What would ye think of offering up prayer?” 
the man asked, diffidently. 

“It ain’t night yet,” she answered. 

“It don’t matter. It ain’t quite regular, but He 
won’t mind that, you bet. You say over them ones 


A. CONAN DOYLE 179 

that you used to say every night in the wagon when 
we was on the plains.” 

“Why don’t you say some yourself?” the child 
asked, with wondering eyes. 

“I disremember them,” he answered. “ I hain’t 
said none since I was half the height o’ that gun. 
I guess it’s never too late. You say them out, and 
I’ll stand by and come in on the choruses.” 

“Then you’ll need to kneel down, and me, too,” 
she said, laying the shawl out for that purpose. 
“You’ve got to put your hands up like this. It 
makes you feel kind of good.” 

It was a strange sight, had there been anything 
but the buzzards to see it. Side by side on the 
narrow shawl knelt the two wanderers, the little, 
prattling child and the reckless, hardened adven¬ 
turer. Her chubby face and his haggard, angular 
visage were both turned up to the cloudless heaven 
in heartfelt entreaty to that dread Being with whom 
they were face to face, while the two voices—the 
one thin and clear, the other deep and harsh— 
united in the entreaty for mercy and forgiveness. 
The prayer finished, they resumed their seat in the 
shadow of the bowlder until the child fell asleep, 
nestling on the broad breast of her protector. He 
watched over her slumber for some time, but 
Nature proved too strong for him. For three days 
and three nights he had allowed himself neither 
rest nor repose. Slowly the eyelids drooped over 
the tired eyes, and the head sank lower and lower 
upon the breast, until the man’s grizzled beard 


180 


THE AVENGERS 


was mixed with the golden tresses of his compan¬ 
ion, and both slept the same deep and dreamless 
slumber. 

Had the wanderer remained awake for another 
half-hour a strange sight would have met his eyes. 
Far away on the extreme verge of the alkali plain 
there rose up a little spray of dust, very slight at 
first, and hardly to be distinguished from the mists 
of the distance, but gradually growing higher and 
broader, until it formed a solid, well-defined cloud. 
This cloud continued to increase in size until it 
became evident that it could only be raised by a 
great multitude of moving creatures. In more fer¬ 
tile spots the observer would have come to the con¬ 
clusion that one of those great herds of bisons 
which graze upon the prairie-land was approaching 
him. This was obviously impossible in these arid 
wilds. As the whirl of dust drew nearer to the 
solitary bluff upon which the two castaways were 
reposing, the canvas-covered tilts of wagons and 
the figures of armed horsemen began to show up 
through the haze, and the apparition revealed itself 
as being a great caravan upon its journey for the 
West. But what a caravan! When the head of it 
had reached the base of the mountains, the rear 
was not yet visible on the horizon. Right across 
the enormous plain stretched the straggling array, 
wagons and carts, men on horseback, and men on 
foot. Innumerable women who staggered along 
under burdens, and children who toddled beside 
the wagons or peeped out from under the white 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


181 


coverings. This was evidently no ordinary party 
of immigrants, but rather some nomad people who 
had been compelled from stress of circumstances 
to seek themselves a new country. There rose 
through the clear air a confused clattering and 
rumbling from this great mass of humanity, with 
the creaking of wheels and the neighing of horses. 
Loud as it was, it was not sufficient to rouse the two 
tired wayfarers above them. 

At the head of the column there rode a score or 
more of grave, iron-faced men, clad in sober home- 
spun garments and armed with rifles. On reaching 
the base of the bluff they halted and held a short 
council among themselves. 

“The wells are to the right, my brothers,” said 
one, a hard-lipped, clean-shaven man with grizzly 
hair. 

“To the right of the Sierra Blanco—so we shall 
reach the Rio Grande,” said another. 

“Fear not for water,” cried a third. “He who 
could draw it from the rocks will not now abandon 
His own chosen people.” 

“Amen! amen!” responded the whole party. 

They were about to resume their journey when 
one of the youngest and keenest-eyed uttered an 
exclamation and pointed up at the rugged crag 
above them. From its summit there fluttered a 
little wisp of pink, showing up hard and bright 
against the gray rocks behind. At the sight there 
was a general reining up of horses and unslinging 
of guns, while fresh horsemen came galloping up 


182 


THE AVENGERS 


to reinforce the vanguard. The word “redskins” 
was on every lip. 

“There can’t be any number of Injuns here,” 
said the elderly man who appeared to be in com¬ 
mand. “We have passed the Pawnees, and 
there are no other tribes until we cross the great 
mountains.” 

“Shall I go forward and see, Brother Stanger- 
son?” asked one of the band. 

“And I,” “And I,” cried a dozen voices. 

“Leave your horses below and we will wait you 
here,” the elder answered. In a moment the young 
fellows had dismounted, fastened their horses, and 
were ascending the precipitous slope which led up 
to the object which had excited their curiosity. 
They advanced rapidly and noiselessly, with the 
confidence and dexterity of practiced scouts. The 
watchers from the plain below could see them flit 
from rock to rock until their figures stood out 
against the sky-line. The young man who had 
first given the alarm was leading them. Suddenly 
his followers saw him throw up his hands, as 
though overcome with astonishment, and, on joining 
him, they were affected in the same way by the 
sight which met their eyes. 

On the little plateau which crowned the barren 
hill there stood a single giant bowlder, and against 
this bowlder there lay a tall man, long-bearded and 
hard-featured, but of an excessive thinness; his 
placid face and regular breathing showed that he 
was fast asleep. Beside him lay a little Child, with 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


183 


her round white arms encircling his brown, sinewy- 
neck, and her golden-haired head resting upon the 
breast of his velveteen tunic. Her rosy lips were 
parted, showing the regular line of snow-white 
teeth within, and a playful smile played over her 
infantile features. Her plump little white legs, 
terminating in white socks and neat shoes with 
shining buckles, offered a strange contrast to the 
long, shrivelled members of her companion. On 
the ledge of rock above this strange couple there 
stood three solemn buzzards, who, at the sight of 
the newcomers, uttered raucous screams of dis¬ 
appointment and flapped sullenly away. 

The cries of the foul birds awoke the two 
sleepers, who stared about them in bewilderment. 
The man staggered to his feet and looked down 
upon the plain which had been so desolate when 
sleep had overtaken him, and which was now trav¬ 
ersed by this enormous body of men and beasts. 
His face assumed an expression of incredulity as 
he gazed, and he passed his bony hand over his 
eyes. 

“This is what they call delirium, I guess,” he 
muttered. The child stood beside him, holding on 
to the skirt of his coat, and said nothing, but looked 
all round her with the wondering, questioning gaze 
of childhood. 

The rescuing party were speedily able to con¬ 
vince the two castaways that their appearance was 
no delusion. One of them seized the little girl, 
and hoisted her upon his shoulder, while two others 


184 


THE AVENGERS 


supported her gaunt companion and assisted him 
toward the wagons. 

“My name is John Ferrier,” the wanderer ex¬ 
plained; “me and that little ’un are all that’s left 
o’ twenty-one people. The rest is all dead o’ thirst 
and hunger away down in the south.” 

“Is she your child?” asked some one. 

“I guess she is now,” the other cried, defiantly; 
“she’s mine ’cause I saved her. No man will take 
her away from me. She’s Lucy Ferrier from this 
day on. Who are you, though?” he continued, 
glancing with curiosity at his stalwart, sunburned 
rescuers; “there seems to be a powerful lot of ye.” 

“Nigh upon ten thousand,” said one of the young 
men; “we are the persecuted children of God—the 
chosen of the angel Merona.” 

“I never heard tell on him,” said the wanderer. 
“He appears to have chosen a fair crowd of ye.” 

“Do not jest at that which is sacred,” said the 
other, sternly. “We are of those who believe in 
those sacred writings, drawn in Egyptian letters 
on plates of beaten gold, which were handed unto 
the holy Joseph Smith, at Palmyra. We have come 
from Nauvoo, in the State of Illinois, where we 
had founded our temple. We have come to seek 
a refuge from the violent man and from the god¬ 
less, even though it be in the very heart of the 
desert.” 

The name of Nauvoo evidently recalled recol¬ 
lections to John Ferrier. 

“I see,” he said; “you are the Mormons.” 


A. CONAN DOYLE 185 

“We are the Mormons,” answered his compan¬ 
ions, with one voice. 

“And where are you going?” 

“We do not know. The hand of God is leading 
us under the person of our prophet. You must 
come before him. He shall say what is to be done 
with you.” 

They had reached the base of the hill by this 
time, and were surrounded by crowds of the pil¬ 
grims—pale-faced, meek-looking women, strong, 
laughing children, and anxious, earnest-eyed men. 
Many were the cries of astonishment and of com¬ 
miseration which arose from them when they per¬ 
ceived the youth of one of the strangers and the 
destitution of the other. Their escort did not halt, 
however, but pushed on, followed by a great crowd 
of Mormons, until they reached a wagon which was 
conspicuous for its great size and for the gaudi¬ 
ness and smartness of its appearance. Six horses 
were yoked to it, whereas the others were furnished 
with two, or, at most, four apiece. Beside the 
driver there sat a man who could not have been 
more than thirty years of age, hut whose massive 
head and resolute expression marked him as a 
leader. He was reading a brown-backed volume, 
but as the crowd approached he laid it aside, and 
listened attentively to an account of the episode. 
Then he turned to the two castaways. 

“If we take you with us,” he said, in solemn 
words, “it can only be as believers in our own 
creed. We shall have no wolves in our fold. Bet- 


186 


THE AVENGERS 


ter far that your bones should bleach in this wilder¬ 
ness than that you should prove to be that little 
speck of decay which in time corrupts the whole 
fruit. Will you come with us on these terms?” 

“Guess Fll come with you on any terms,” said 
Ferrier, with such emphasis that the grave elders 
could not restrain a smile. The leader alone re¬ 
tained his stern, impressive expression. 

“Take him, Brother Stangerson,” he said; “give 
him food and drink, and the child likewise. Let 
it be your task also to teach him our holy creed. 
We have delayed long enough. Forward! On, on 
to Zion!” 

“On, on to Zion!” cried the crowd of Mormons, 
and the words rippled down the long caravan, pass¬ 
ing from mouth to mouth until they died away in 
a dull murmur in the far distance. With a crack¬ 
ing of whips and a creaking of wheels the great 
wagon got into motion, and soon the whole caravan 
was winding along once more. The elder to whose 
care the two waifs had been committed led them to 
his wagon, where a meal was already awaiting 
them. 

“You shall remain here,” he said. “In a few 
days you will have recovered from your fatigues. 
In the meantime, remember that now and forever 
you are of our religion. Brigham Young has said 
it, and he has spoken with the voice of Joseph 
Smith, which is the voice of God.” 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


187 


II 

This is not the place to commemorate the trials 
and privations endured by the immigrant Mormons 
before they came to their final haven. From the 
shores of the Mississippi to the western slopes of 
the Rocky Mountains they had struggled on with 
a constancy almost unparalleled in history. The 
savage man and the savage beast, hunger, thirst, 
fatigue, and disease—every impediment which 
Nature could place in the way, had all been over¬ 
come with Anglo-Saxon tenacity. Yet the long jour¬ 
ney and the accumulated terrors had shaken the 
hearts of the stoutest among them. There was not 
one who did not sink upon his knees in heartfelt 
prayer when they saw the broad valley of Utah 
bathed in the sunlight beneath them, and learned 
from the lips of their leader that this was the 
promised land, and that these virgin acres were to 
be theirs for evermore. 

Young speedily proved himself to be a skilful 
administrator, as well as a resolute chief. Maps 
were drawn and charts prepared, in which the 
future city was sketched out. All around farms 
were apportioned and allotted in proportion to the 
standing of each individual. The tradesman was 
put to his trade and the artisan to his calling. In 
the town streets and squares sprang up as if by 
magic. In the country there was draining and 
hedging, planting and clearing, until the next sum¬ 
mer saw the whole country golden with the wheat 
crop. Everything prospered in the strange settle- 


188 


THE AVENGERS 


ment. Above all, the great temple which they had 
erected in the centre of the city grew taller and 
larger. From the first blush of dawn until the clos¬ 
ing of the twilight the clatter of the hammer and the 
rasp of the saw Were never absent from the monu¬ 
ment which the immigrants erected to Him who had 
led them safe through many dangers. 

The two castaways, John Ferrier and the little 
girl who had shared his fortunes and had been 
adopted as his daughter, accompanied the Mor¬ 
mons to the end of their great pilgrimage. Little 
Lucy Ferrier was borne along pleasantly enough 
in Elder Stangerson’s wagon, a retreat which she 
shared with the Mormon’s three wives and with 
his son, a headstrong, forward boy of twelve. Hav¬ 
ing rallied, with the elasticity of childhood, from 
the shock caused by her mother’s death, she soon 
became a pet with the women, and reconciled her¬ 
self to this new life in her moving, canvas-covered 
home. In the meantime Ferrier, having recovered 
from his privations, distinguished himself as a 
useful guide and an indefatigable hunter. So rap¬ 
idly did he gain the esteem of his new companions 
that when they reached the end of their wander¬ 
ings it was unanimously agreed that he should be 
provided with as large and fertile a tract of land 
as any of the settlers, with the exception of Young 
himself, and of Stangerson, Kimball, Johnston, 
and Drebher, who were the four principal elders. 

On the farm thus acquired John Ferrier built 
himself a substantial log-house, which received so 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


189 


many additions in succeeding years that it grew 
into a roomy villa. He was a man of a practical 
turn of mind, keen in his dealings, and skilful with 
his hands. His iron constitution enabled him to 
work morning and evening at improving and tilling 
his lands. Hence it came about that his farm and 
all that belonged to him prospered exceedingly. 
In three years he was better off than his neighbors, 
in six he was well-to-do, in nine he was rich, and 
in twelve there were not half a dozen men in 
the whole of Salt Lake City who could compare 
with him. From the great inland sea to the distant 
Wahsatch Mountains there was no name better 
known than that of John Ferrier. 

There was one way, and only one, in which he 
offended the susceptibilities of his co-religionists. 
No argument or persuasion could ever induce him 
to set up a female establishment after the manner 
of his companions. He never gave reasons for this 
persistent refusal, but contented himself by reso¬ 
lutely and inflexibly adhering to his determination. 
There were some who accused him of lukewarm¬ 
ness in his adopted religion, and others who put it 
down to greed of wealth and reluctance to incur 
expense. Others, again, spoke of some early love 
affair, and of a fair-haired girl who had pined 
away on the shores of the Atlantic. Whatever the 
reason, Ferrier remained strictly celibate. In every 
other respect he conformed to the religion of the 
young settlement, and gained the name of being an 
orthodox and straight-walking man. 


190 


THE AVENGERS 


Lucy Ferrier grew up within the log-house, and 
assisted her adopted father in all his undertakings. 
The keen air of the mountains and the balsamic 
odor of the pine-trees took the place of nurse and 
mother to the young girl. As year succeeded year 
she grew taller and stronger, her cheek more ruddy, 
and her step more elastic. Many a wayfarer upon 
the high-road which ran by Ferrier’s farm felt long- 
forgotten thoughts revive in his mind as he watched 
her lithe, girlish figure tripping through the wheat- 
fields, or met her mounted upon her father’s 
mustang, and managing it with all the ease and 
grace of a true child of the West. So the bud 
blossomed into a flower, and the year which saw 
her father the richest of the farmers left her as 
fair a specimen of American girlhood as could be 
found in the whole Pacific slope. 

It was not the father, however, who first dis¬ 
covered that the child had developed into the 
woman. It seldom is in such cases. That mysteri¬ 
ous change is too subtle and too gradual to be 
measured by dates. Least of all does the maiden 
herself know it until the tone of a voice or the 
touch of a hand sets her heart thrilling within her, 
and she learns, with a mixture of pride and of fear, 
that a new and larger nature has awakened within 
her. 

There are few who cannot recall that day and 
remember the one little incident which heralded 
the dawn of a new life. In the case of Lucy Ferrier 
the occasion was serious enough in itself, apart 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


191 


from its future influence on her destiny and that 
of many besides. 

It was a warm June morning, and the Latter-Day 
Saints were as busy as the bees whose hives they 
have chosen for their emblem. In the fields and 
in the streets rose the same hum of human industry. 
Down the dusty high-roads defiled long streams of 
heavily laden mules, all heading to the West, for 
the gold fever had broken out in California, and the 
Overland Route lay through the City of the Elect. 
There, too, were droves of sheep and bullocks 
coming in from the outlying pasture lands, and 
trains of tired immigrants, men and horses equally 
weary of their interminable journey. Through all 
this motley assemblage, threading her way with the 
skill of an accomplished rider, there galloped Lucy 
Ferrier, her fair face flushed with the exercise and 
her long chestnut hair floating out behind her. She 
had a commission from her father in the city, and 
was dashing in as she had done many a time 
before, with all the fearlessness of youth, thinking 
only of her task and how it was to be performed. 
The travel-stained adventurers gazed after her in 
astonishment, and even the unemotional Indians, 
journeying in with their peltry, relaxed their accus¬ 
tomed stoicism as they marveled at the beauty of 
the pale-faced maiden. 

She had reached the outskirts of the city when 
she found the road blocked by a great drove of 
cattle, driven by half a dozen wild-looking herds¬ 
men from the plains. In her impatience she en- 


192 


THE AVENGERS 


deavored to pass this obstacle by pushing her horse 
into what appeared to be a gap. Scarcely had she 
got fairly into it, however, before the beasts closed 
in behind her, and she found herself completely 
imbedded in the moving stream of fierce-eyed, 
long-horned bullocks. Accustomed as she was to 
deal with cattle, she was not alarmed at her situ¬ 
ation, but took advantage of every opportunity 
to urge her horse on in the hope of pushing her 
way through the cavalcade. Unfortunately the 
horns of one of the creatures, either by accident or 
design, came in violent contact with the flank of the 
mustang, and excited it to madness. In an instant 
it reared up upon its hind legs with a snort of rage, 
and pranced and tossed in a way that would have 
unseated any but a most skilful rider. The situ¬ 
ation was full of peril. Every plunge of the excited 
horse brought it against the horns again, and 
goaded it to fresh madness. It was all that the girl 
could do to keep herself in the saddle, yet a slip 
would mean a terrible death under the hoofs of the 
unwieldy and terrified animals. Unaccustomed to 
sudden emergencies, her head began to swim and 
her grip upon the bridle to relax. Choked by the 
rising cloud of dust and by the steam from the 
struggling creatures, she might have abandoned 
her efforts in despair but for a kindly voice at her 
elbow which assured her of assistance. At the 
same moment a sinewy brown hand caught the 
frightened horse by the curb, and, forcing a way 
through the drove, brought her to the outskirts. 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


193 


“You’re not hurt, I hope, miss,” said her pre¬ 
server, respectfully. 

She looked up at his dark, fierce face, and 
laughed saucily. 

“I’m awful frightened,” she said, naively; 
“whoever would have thought that Poncho would 
have been so scared by a lot of cows?” 

“Thank God you kept your seat,” the other said, 
earnestly. He was a tall, savage-looking young 
fellow, mounted on a powerful roan horse, and clad 
in the rough dress of a hunter, with a long rifle 
slung over his shoulder. “I guess you are the 
daughter of John Ferrier,” he remarked. “I saw 
you ride down from his house. When you see him, 
ask him if he remembers the Jefferson Hopes of 
St. Louis. If he’s the same Ferrier, my father and 
he were pretty thick.” 

“Hadn’t you better come and ask yourself?” she 
asked, demurely. 

The young fellow seemed pleased at the sug¬ 
gestion, and his dark eyes sparkled with pleasure. 

“I’ll do so,” he said; “we’ve been in the moun¬ 
tains for two months, and are not over and above 
in visiting condition. He must take us as he finds 
us.” 

“He has a good deal to thank you for, and so 
have I,” she answered; “he’s awful fond of me. 
If those cows had jumped on me he’d have never 
got over it.” 

“Neither would I,” said her companion. 

“You? Well, I don’t see that it would make 


194 


THE AVENGERS 


much matter to you, anyhow. You ain’t even a 
friend of ours.” 

The young hunter’s dark face grew so gloomy 
over this remark that Lucy Ferrier laughed aloud. 

“There, I didn’t mean that,” she said; “of course 
you are a friend now. You must come and see 
us. Now I must push along, or father won’t trust 
me with his business any more. Good-by.” 

“Good-by,” he answered, raising his broad som¬ 
brero and bending over her little hand. She 
wheeled her mustang round, gave it a cut with her 
riding-whip, and darted away down the broad road 
in a rolling cloud of dust. 

Young Jefferson Hope rode on with his com¬ 
panions, gloomy and taciturn. He and they had 
been among the Nevada Mountains prospecting for 
silver, and were returning to Salt Lake City in the 
hope of raising capital enough to work some lodes 
which they had discovered. He had been as keen 
as any of them upon the business until this sudden 
incident had drawn his thoughts into another chan¬ 
nel. The sight of the fair young girl, as frank and 
wholesome as the Sierra breezes, had stirred his 
volcanic, untamed heart to its very depths. When 
she had vanished from his sight he realized that a 
crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver 
speculations nor any other questions could ever 
be of such importance to him as this new and all- 
absorbing one. The love which had sprung up 
in his heart was not the sudden, changeable fancy 
of a boy, but rather the wild, fierce passion of a 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


195 


man of strong will and imperious temper. He had 
been accustomed to succeed in all that he under¬ 
took. He swore in his heart he would not fail in 
this if human effort and human perseverance could 
render him successful. 

He called on John Ferrier that night, and many 
times again, until his face was a familiar one at 
the farmhouse. John, cooped up in the valley and 
absorbed in his work, had little chance of learning 
the news from the outside world during the last 
twelve years. All this Jefferson Hope was able to 
tell him, and in a style which interested Lucy as 
well as her father. 

Jefferson Hope had been a pioneer in Cali¬ 
fornia, and could narrate many a strange tale 
of fortunes made and fortunes lost in those wild, 
halcyon days. He had been a scout, too, and a 
trapper, a silver explorer, and a ranchman. 
Wherever stirring adventures were to be had, Jef¬ 
ferson Hope had been there in search of them. He 
soon became a favorite with the old farmer, who 
spoke eloquently of his virtues. On such occasions 
Lucy was silent, but her blushing cheek and her 
bright, happy eyes, showed only too clearly that her 
young heart was no longer her own. Her honest 
father may not have observed these symptoms, but 
they were assuredly not thrown away upon the 
man who had won her affections. 

It was a summer evening when he came galloping 
down the road and pulled up at the gate. She was 
at the doorway, and came down to meet him. He 


196 THE AVENGERS 

threw the bridle over the fence and strode up the 
pathway. 

“I am off, Lucy,” he said, taking her two hands 
in his and gazing tenderly down into her face; 
“I won’t ask you to come with me now, but will you 
be ready to come when I am here again?” 

“And when will that be?” she asked, blushing 
and laughing. 

“A couple of months at the outside. I will come 
and claim you then, my darling. There’s no one 
who can stand between us.” 

“And how about father?” she asked. 

“He has given his consent, provided we get these 
mines working all right. I have no fear on that 
head.” 

“Oh, well, of course, if you and father have 
arranged it all, there’s no more to be said,” she 
whispered, with her cheek against his broad breast. 

“Thank God!” he said, hoarsely, stooping and 
kissing her. “It is settled then. The longer I 
stay the harder it will be for me to go. They are 
waiting for me at the canyon. Good-bye, my own 
darling—good-bye. In two months you shall see 
me.” 

He tore himself from her as he spoke, and, fling¬ 
ing himself upon his horse, galloped furiously 
away, never even looking round, as though afraid 
that his resolution might fail him if he took one 
glance at what he was leaving. She stood at the 
gate, gazing after him until he vanished from 
sight. Then she walked back into the house, the 
happiest girl in all Utah. 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


197 


III 

Three weeks had passed since Jefferson Hope 
and his comrades had departed from Salt Lake 
City. John Ferrier’s heart was sore within him 
when he thought of the young man’s return, and of 
the impending loss of his adopted child. Yet her 
bright and happy face reconciled him to the 
arrangement more than any argument could have 
done. He had always determined, deep down in 
his resolute heart, that nothing would ever induce 
him to allow his daughter to wed a Mormon. Such 
a marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, 
but as a shame and a disgrace. Whatever he might 
think of the Mormon doctrines, upon that one point 
he was inflexible. He had to seal his mouth on 
the subject, however, for to express an unorthodox 
opinion was a dangerous matter in those days in 
the Land of the Saints. 

Yes, a dangerous matter—so dangerous that even 
the most saintly dared only whisper their religious 
opinions with bated breath, lest something which 
fell from their lips might be misconstrued and 
bring down a swift retribution upon them. The 
victims of persecution had now turned persecu¬ 
tors on their own account, and persecutors of the 
most terrible description. Not the inquisition of 
Seville, nor the German Vehmgericht, nor the secret 
societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more 
formidable machinery in motion than that which 
cast a cloud over the Territory of Utah. 

Its invisibility, and the mystery which was 


198 


THE AVENGERS 


attached to it, made this organization doubly ter¬ 
rible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnip¬ 
otent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The 
man who held out against the church vanished 
away, and none knew whither he had gone or what 
had befallen him. His wife and children awaited 
him at home, but no father had ever returned to 
tell them how he had fared at the hands of his 
secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was 
followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what 
the nature might be of this terrible power which 
was suspended over them. No wonder that men 
went about in fear and trembling, and that even in 
the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper 
the doubts which oppressed them. 

At first this vague and terrible power was exer¬ 
cised only upon the recalcitrants, who, having 
embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterward to 
pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took 
a wider range. The supply of adult women was 
running short, and polygamy, without a female 
population on which to draw, was a barren doctrine 
indeed. Strange rumors began to be bandied 
about—rumors of murdered immigrants and rifled 
camps in regions where Indians had never been 
seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the 
elders—women who pined and wept, and bore upon 
their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror. 
Belated wanderers upon the mountains spoke of 
gangs of armed men, masked, stealthy, and noise¬ 
less, who flitted by them in the darkness. These 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


199 


tales and rumors took substance and shape, and 
were corroborated and recorroborated, until they 
resolved themselves into a definite name. To this 
day, in the lonely ranches of the West, the name 
of the Danite Band, or the Avenging Angels, is a 
sinister and an ill-omened one. 

Fuller knowledge of the organization which pro¬ 
duced such terrible results served to increase rather 
than to lessen the horror which it inspired in the 
minds of men. None knew who belonged to this 
ruthless society. The names of the participators 
in the deeds of blood and violence, done under 
the name of religion, were kept profoundly secret. 
The very friend to whom you communicated your 
misgivings as to the prophet and his mission might 
be one of those who would come forth at night 
with fire and sword to exact a terrible reparation. 
Hence every man feared his neighbor, and none 
spoke of the things which were nearest his heart. 

One fine morning John Ferrier was about to 
set out to his wheat fields when he heard the click 
of the latch, and, looking through the window, 
saw a stout, sandy-haired, middle-aged man coming 
up the pathway. His heart leaped to his mouth, 
for this was none other than the great Brigham 
Young himself. Full of trepidation, for he knew 
that such a visit boded him little good, Ferrier ran 
to the door to greet the Mormon chief. The latter, 
however, received his salutation coldly, and fol¬ 
lowed him with a stem face into the sitting-room. 

“Brother Ferrier,” he said, taking a seat and eye- 


200 


THE AVENGERS 


ing the farmer keenly from under his light-colored 
eyelashes, “the true believers have been good 
friends to you. We picked you up when you were 
starving in the desert, we shared our food with 
you, led you safe to the Chosen Valley, gave you 
a goodly share of land, and allowed you to wax 
rich under our protection. Is not this so?” 

“It is so,” answered John Ferrier. 

“In return for all this we asked but one con¬ 
dition: that was, that you should embrace the true 
faith, and conform in every way to its usages. 
This you promised to do, and this, if common 
report says truly, you have neglected.” 

“And how have I neglected it?” asked Ferrier, 
throwing out his hands in expostulation. “Have I 
not given to the common fund? Have I not 
attended at the temple? Have I not”- 

“Where are your wives?” asked Young, looking 
round him. “Call them in, that I may greet them.” 

“It is true that I have not married,” Ferrier 
answered. “But women were few, and there were 
many who had better claims than I. I was not 
a lonely man; I had my daughter to attend to my 
wants.” 

“It is of that daughter that I would speak to 
you,” said the leader of the Mormons. “She has 
grown to be the flower of Utah, and has found 
favor in the eyes of many who are high in the 
land.” 

John Ferrier groaned internally. 

“There are stories of her which I would fain 



A. CONAN DOYLE 


201 


disbelieve—stories that she is sealed to some 
Gentile. This must be the gossip of idle tongues. 
What is the thirteenth rule in the code of the 
sainted Joseph Smith? 'Let every maiden of the 
true faith marry one of the elect; for if she wed 
a Gentile, she commits a grievous sin.’ This being 
so, it is impossible that you, who profess the holy 
creed, should suffer your daughter to violate it.” 

John Ferrier made no answer, but he played 
nervously with his riding-whip. 

"Upon this one point your whole faith shall be 
tested—so it has been decided in the Sacred Coun¬ 
cil of Four. The girl is young, and we would not 
have her wed gray hairs, neither would we deprive 
her of all choice. We elders have many heifers,* 
but our children must also be provided. Stanger- 
son has a son, and Drebber has a son, and either 
of them would gladly welcome your daughter to 
their house. Let her choose between them. They 
are young and rich, and of the true faith. What 
say you to that?” 

Ferrier remained silent for some little time with 
his brows knitted. 

"You will give us time,” he said, at last. "My 
daughter is very young—she is scarce of an age 
to marry.” 

"She shall have a month to choose,” said Young, 
rising from his seat. "At the end of that time she 
shall give her answer.” 

*Heber C. Kimball, in one of his sermons, alludes to his hun¬ 
dred wives under this endearing epithet. 


202 


THE AVENGERS 


He was passing through the door when he turned, 
with flushed face and flashing eyes. 

“It were better for you, John Ferrier,” he thun¬ 
dered, “that you and she were now lying blanched 
skeletons upon the Sierra Blanco, than that you 
should put your weak wills against the orders of 
the Holy Four!” 

With a threatening gesture of his hand he turned 
from the door, and Ferrier heard his heavy step 
scrunching along the shingly path. 

He was still sitting with his elbows upon his 
knees, considering how he should broach the mat¬ 
ter to his daughter, when a soft hand was laid upon 
his, and, looking up, he saw her standing beside 
him. One glance at her pale, frightened face 
showed him that she had heard what had passed. 

“I could not help it,” she said, in answer to 
his look. “His voice rang through the house. Oh, 
father! father! what shall we do?” 

“Don’t you scare yourself,” he answered, draw¬ 
ing her to him and passing his broad, rough hand 
caressingly over her chestnut hair. “We’ll fix it 
up somehow or another. You don’t find your fancy 
kind o’ lessening for this chap, do you?” 

A sob and a squeeze of his hand was her only 
answer. 

“No; of course not. I shouldn’t care to hear 
you say you did. He’s a likely lad, and he’s a 
Christian, which is more than these folks here, 
in spite o’ all their praying and preaching. There’s 
a party starting for Nevada tomorrow, and I’ll 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


203 


manage to send him a message letting him know 
the hole we are in. If I know anything o’ that 
young man, he’ll be back here with a speed that 
would whip electro-telegraphs.” 

Lucy laughed through her tears at her father’s 
description. 

“When he comes, he will advise us for the best. 
But it is for you that I am frightened, dear. One 
hears—one hears such dreadful stories about those 
who oppose the prophet; something terrible always 
happens to them.” 

“But we haven’t opposed him yet,” her father 
answered. “It will be time to look out for squalls 
when we do. We have a clear month before us; 
at the end of that I guess we had best shin out of 
Utah.” 

“Leave Utah?” 

“That’s about the size of it.” 

“But the farm?” 

“We will raise as much as we can in money, and 
let the rest go. To tell the truth, Lucy, it isn’t the 
first time I have thought of doing it. I don’t care 
about knuckling under to any man, as these folk do 
to their darned prophet. I’m a free-born Ameri¬ 
can, and it’s all new to me. Guess I’m too old 
to learn. If he comes browsing about this farm 
he might chance to run up against a charge of 
buckshot traveling in the opposite direction.” 

“But they won’t let us leave,” his daughter 
objected. 

“Wait till Jefferson comes, and we 11 soon man- 


204 


THE AVENGERS 


age that. In the meantime, don’t you fret your¬ 
self, my dearie, and don’t you get your eyes swelled 
up, or else he’ll be walking into me when he sees 
you. There’s nothing to be afeared about, and 
there’s no danger at all.” 

John Ferrier uttered these consoling remarks 
in a very confident tone, but she could not help 
observing that he paid unusual care to the fasten¬ 
ing of the doors that night, and that he carefully 
cleaned and loaded the rusty old shotgun which 
hung upon the wall of his bedroom. 

IV 

On the morning which followed his interview 
with the Mormon prophet, John Ferrier went into 
Salt Lake City, and having found his acquaintance 
who was bound for the Nevada Mountains, he 
intrusted him with his message to Jefferson Hope. 
In it he told the young man of the imminent dan¬ 
ger which threatened them, and how necessary it 
was that he should return. Having done this, he 
felt easier in his mind and returned home with a 
lighter heart. 

As he approached his farm he was surprised to 
see a horse hitched to each of the posts of the gate. 
Still more surprised was he on entering to find 
two young men in possession of his sitting-room. 
One, with a long, pale face, was leaning back in 
the rocking chair, with his feet cocked up upon 
the stove. The other, a bull-necked youth, with 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


205 


coarse, bloated features, was standing in front of 
the window, with his hands in his pockets, whistling 
a popular hymn. Both of them nodded to Ferrier 
as he entered, and the one in the rocking chair 
commenced the conversation. 

“Maybe you don’t know us,” he said. “This 
here is the son of Elder Drebber, and I’m Joseph 
Stangerson, who traveled with you in the desert 
when the Lord stretched out His hand and gathered 
you into the true fold.” 

“As he will all the nations, in his own good 
time,” said the other, in a nasal voice; “He grind- 
eth slowly but exceeding small.” 

John Ferrier bowed coldly. He had guessed 
who his visitors were. 

“We have come,” continued Stangerson, “at the 
advice of our fathers, to solicit the hand of your 
daughter for whichever of us may seem good to 
you and to her. As I have but four wives and 
Brother Drebber here has seven, it appears to me 
that my claim is the stronger one.” 

“Nay, nay, Brother Stangerson,” cried the other; 
“the question is not how many wives we have, 
but how many we can keep. My father has now 
given over his mills to me, and I am the richer 
man.” 

“But my prospects are better,” said the other, 
warmly. “When the Lord removes my father I 
shall have his tanning yard and his leather factory. 
Then I am your elder, and am higher in the 
church.” 


206 


THE AVENGERS . 


“It will be for the maiden to decide,” rejoined 
young Drebber, smirking at his own reflection in 
the glass. “We will leave it all to her decision.” 

During this dialogue John Ferrier had stood 
fuming in the doorway, hardly able to keep his 
riding-whip from the backs of his two visitors. 

“Look here,” he said, at last, striding up to them; 
“when my daughter summons you, you can come; 
until then, I don’t want to see your faces again.” 

The two young Mormons stared at him in amaze¬ 
ment. In their eyes this competition between them 
for the maiden’s hand was the highest of honors 
both to her and her father. 

“There are two ways out of the room,” cried 
Ferrier; “there is the door, and there is the win¬ 
dow. Which do you care to use?” 

His brown face looked so savage, and his gaunt 
hands so threatening, that his visitors sprang to 
their feet and beat a hurried retreat. The old 
farmer followed them to the door. 

“Let me know when you have settled which it is 
to be,” he said, sardonically. 

“You shall smart for this!” Stangerson cried, 
white with rage. “You have defied the prophet 
and the Council of Four. You shall rue it to the 
end of your days.” 

“The hand of the Lord shall be heavy upon 
you,” cried young Drebber; “He will arise and 
smite you!” 

“Then I’ll start the smiting,” exclaimed Ferrier, 
furiously, and he would have rushed upstairs 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


207 


for his gun had not Lucy seized him by the arm 
and restrained him. Before he could escape from 
her the clatter of horses’ hoofs told him that they 
were beyond his reach. 

“The young canting rascals!” he exlaimed, wip¬ 
ing the perspiration from his forehead; “I would 
sooner see you in your grave, my girl, than the 
wife of either of them.” 

“And so should I, father,” she answered, with 
spirit; “but Jefferson will soon be here.” 

“Yes; it will not be long before he comes. The 
sooner the better, for we do not know what their 
next move may be.” 

It was, indeed, high time that some one capable 
of giving advice and help should come to the aid 
of the sturdy old farmer and his adopted daughter. 
In the whole history of the settlement there had 
never been such a case of rank disobedience to 
the authority of the elders. If minor errors were 
punished so sternly, what would be the fate of this 
arch rebel? Ferrier knew that his wealth and 
position would be of no avail to him. Others as 
well known and as rich as himself had been spirited 
away before now, and their goods given over to the 
church. He was a brave man, but he trembled at 
the vague, shadowy terrors which hung heavily 
over him. 

Any known danger he could face with a firm lip, 
but this suspense was unnerving. He concealed 
his fears from his daughter, however, and affected 
to make light of the whole matter, though she, 


208 THE AVENGERS 

with the keen eye of love, saw plainly that he was 
ill at ease. 

He expected that he would receive some message 
or remonstrance from Young as to his conduct, 
and he was not mistaken, though it came in an 
unlooked-for manner. Upon rising next morn¬ 
ing he found, to his surprise, a small square of 
paper pinned on the coverlet of his bed just over 
his chest. On it was printed, in bold, straggling 
letters: 

‘Twenty-nine days are given you for amend¬ 
ment, and then-” 

The dash was more fear-inspiring than any 
threat could have been. How this warning came 
into his room puzzled John Ferrier sorely, for his 
servants slept in an out-house, and the doors and 
windows had all been secured. He crumpled the 
paper up and said nothing to his daughter, but 
the incident struck a chill into his heart. The 
twenty-nine days were evidently the balance of the 
month which Young had promised. What strength 
or courage could avail against an enemy armed 
with such mysterious powers? The hand which 
fastened that pin might have struck him to the 
heart, and he could never have known who had 
slain him. 

Still more shaken was he next morning. They 
had sat down to their breakfast when Lucy, with 
a cry of surprise, pointed upward. In the centre 



A. CONAN DOYLE 


209 


of the ceiling was scrawled, with a burned stick 
apparently, the number 28. To his daughter it 
was unintelligible, and he did not enlighten her. 
That night he sat up with his gun and kept watch 
and ward. He saw and heard nothing, and yet in 
the morning a great 27 had been painted upon the 
outside of his door. 

Thus day followed day; and as sure as morning 
came he found that his unseen enemies had kept 
their register, and had marked up in some conspicu¬ 
ous position how many days were still left to him 
out of the month of grace. Sometimes the fatal 
numbers appeared on the walls, sometimes upon 
the floors; occasionally they were on small placards 
stuck upon the garden gate or the railings. With 
all his vigilance John Ferrier could not discover 
whence these daily warnings proceeded. A horror, 
which was almost superstitious, came upon him at 
the sight of them. He became haggard and restless, 
and his eyes had the troubled look of some hunted 
creature. He had but one hope in life now, and 
that was for the arrival of the young hunter from 
Nevada. 

Twenty had changed to fifteen, and fifteen to 
ten; but there was no news of the absentee. One 
by one the numbers dwindled down, and still there 
came no sign of him. Whenever a horseman clat¬ 
tered down the road or a driver shouted at his team, 
the old farmer hurried to the gate, thinking that 
help had arrived at last. At last, when he saw five 
giving way to four, and that again to three, he 


210 


THE AVENGERS 


lost heart and abandoned all hope of escape. 
Single-handed, and with his limited knowledge of 
the mountains which surrounded the settlement, 
he knew that he was powerless. The more fre¬ 
quented roads were strictly watched and guarded, 
and none could pass along them without an order 
from the council. Turn which way he would, there 
appeared to be no avoiding the blow which hung 
over him. Yet the old man never wavered in his 
resolution to part with life itself before he con¬ 
sented to what he regarded as his daughter’s 
dishonor. 

He was sitting alone one evening, pondering 
deeply over his troubles, and searching vainly for 
some way out of them. That morning had shown 
the figure 2 upon the wall of his house, and the 
next day would be the last of the allotted time. 
What was to happen then? All manner of vague 
and terrible fancies filled his imagination. And 
his daughter—what was to become of her after 
he was gone? Was there no escape from the invisi¬ 
ble network which was drawn all around them? 
He sunk his head upon the table and sobbed at the 
thought of his own impotence. 

What was that? In the silence he heard a gentle 
scratching sound—low, but very distinct, in the 
quiet of the night. It came from the door of the 
house. Ferrier crept into the hall and listened 
intently. There was a pause for a few moments, 
and then the low, insidious sound was repeated. 
Some one was evidently tapping very gently upon 


A. CONAN DOYLE 211 

one of the panels of the door. Was it some mid¬ 
night assassin who had come to carry out the mur¬ 
derous order of the secret tribunal? Or was it 
some agent who was marking up that the last day 
of grace had arrived? John Ferrier felt that 
instant death would be better than the suspense 
which shook his nerves and chilled his heart. 
Springing forward, he drew the bolt and threw 
the door open. 

Outside all was calm and quiet. The night was 
fine, and the stars were twinkling brightly overhead. 
The little front garden lay before the farmer’s 
eyes, bounded by the fence and gate; but neither 
there nor on the road was any human being to be 
seen. With a sigh of relief Ferrier looked to right 
and to left, until, happening to glance straight 
down at his feet, he saw, to his astonishment, a 
man lying flat upon his face upon the ground, with 
his arms and legs all asprawl. 

So unnerved was he at the sight that he leaned 
up against the wall with his hand to his throat to 
stifle his inclination to call out. His first thought 
was that the prostrate figure was that of some 
wounded or dying man, but as he watched it he 
saw it writhe along the ground and into the hall 
with the rapidity and noiselessness of a serpent. 
Once within the house the man sprung to his feet, 
closed the door, and revealed to the astonished 
farmer the fierce face and resolute expression of 
Jefferson Hope. 

“Good God!” gasped John Ferrier. “How you 


212 THE AVENGERS 

scared me! What ever made you come in like 
that?” 

“Give me food,” the other said, hoarsely. “I 
have had no time for bite or sup for eight-and- 
forty hours.” He flung himself upon the cold 
meat and bread which were still lying upon the 
table from his host’s supper, and devoured them 
voraciously. “Does Lucy bear up well?” he asked, 
when he had satisfied his hunger. 

“Yes; she does not know the danger,” her father 
answered. 

“That is well. The house is watched on every 
side. That is why I crawled my way up to it. 
They may be darned sharp, but they’re not quite 
sharp enough to catch a Washoe hunter.” 

John Ferrier felt a different man now that he 
realized that he had a devoted ally. He seized 
the young man’s leathery hand and wrung it 
cordially. 

“You’re a man to be proud of,” he said. “There 
are not many who would come to share our danger 
and our troubles.” 

“You’ve hit it there, pard,” the young hunter 
answered. “I have a respect for you, but if you 
were alone in this business I’d think twice before 
I put my head into such a hornets’ nest. It’s Lucy 
that brings me here, and before harm comes on 
her I guess there will be one less o’ the Hope family 
in Utah.” 

“What are we to do?” 

“To-morrow is your last day, and unless you 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


213 


act to-night you are lost. I have a mule and two 
horses waiting in the Eagle Ravine. How much 
money have you?” 

Two thousand dollars in gold, and five in 
notes.” 

“That will do. I have as much more to add to 
it. We must push for Carson City through the 
mountains. You had best wake Lucy. It is well 
that the servants do not sleep in the house.” 

While Ferrier was absent preparing his daughter 
for the approaching journey, Jefferson Hope 
packed all the eatables that he could find into a 
small parcel, and filled a stoneware jar with water, 
for he knew by experience that the mountain wells 
were few and far between. He had hardly com¬ 
pleted his arrangements before the farmer returned 
with his daughter, all dressed and ready for a 
start. The greeting between the lovers was warm 
but brief, for minutes were precious, and there was 
much to be done. 

“We must make our start at once,” said Jefferson 
Hope, speaking in a low but resolute voice, like 
one who realizes the greatness of the peril, but has 
steeled his heart to meet it. “The front and back 
entrances are watched, but with caution we may 
get away through the side window and across the 
fields. Once on the road, we are only two miles 
from the ravine where the horses are waiting. By 
daybreak we should be half-way through the 
mountains.” 

“What if we are stopped?” asked Ferrier. 


214 


THE AVENGERS 


Hope slapped the revolver butt which protruded 
from the front of his tunic. 

“If they are too many for us, we shall take two 
or three of them with us,” he said, with a sinister 
smile. 

The lights inside the house had all been extin¬ 
guished, and from the darkened window Ferrier 
peered over the fields which had been his own, 
and which he was now about to abandon forever. 
He had long nerved himself to the sacrifice, how¬ 
ever, and the thought of the honor and happiness 
of his daughter outweighed any regret at his ruined 
fortunes. All looked so peaceful and happy, the 
rustling trees and the broad, silent stretch of grain 
land, that it was difficult to realize that the spirit 
of murder lurked through it all. Yet the white 
face and set expression of the young hunter showed 
that in his approach to the house he had seen 
enough to satisfy him upon that head. 

Ferrier carried the bag of gold and notes, Jeffer¬ 
son Hope had the scanty provisions and water, 
while Lucy had a small bundle containing a few 
of her more valued possessions. Opening the win¬ 
dow very slowly and carefully, they waited until 
a dark cloud had somewhat obscured the moon, 
and then one by one passed through into the little 
garden. With bated breath and crouching figures 
they stumbled across it and gained the shelter of 
the hedge, which they skirted until they came to 
the gap which opened into the corn-field. They 
had just reached this point when the young man 


A. CONAN DOYLE 215 

seized his two companions and dragged them 
down into the shadow, where they lay silent and 
trembling. 

It was as well that his prairie training had given 
Jefferson Hope the ears of a lynx. He and his 
friends had hardly crouched down before the mel¬ 
ancholy hooting of a mountain owl was heard 
within a few yards of them, which was immediately 
answered by another hoot at a small distance. At 
the same moment a vague, shadowy figure emerged 
from the gap for which they had been making, 
and uttered the plaintive signal cry again, on 
which a second man appeared out of the obscurity. 

‘To-morrow at midnight,” said the first, who 
appeared to be in authority. “When the whip- 
poor-will calls three times.” 

“It is well,” returned the other. “Shall I tell 
Brother Drebber?” 

“Pass it on to him, and from him to the others. 
Nine to seven!” 

“Seven to five!” repeated the other, and the two 
figures flitted away in different directions. Their 
concluding words had evidently been some form 
of sign and countersign. The instant that their 
footsteps had died away in the distance Jefferson 
Hope sprang to his feet, and, helping his compan¬ 
ions through the gap, led the way across the fields 
at full speed, supporting and half carrying the 
girl when her strength finally appeared to fail 
her. 

“Hurry on! hurry on!” he gasped from time to 


216 


THE AVENGERS 


time. “We are through the line of sentinels. 
Everything depends on speed. Hurry on!” 

Once on the high-road they made rapid progress. 
Only once did they meet anyone, and then they 
managed to slip into a field, and so avoid recogni¬ 
tion. Before reaching the town the hunter branched 
away into a rugged and narrow footpath which led 
to the mountains. Two dark, jagged peaks loomed 
above them through the darkness, and the defile 
which led between them was the Eagle Ravine, in 
which the horses were awaiting them. With unerr¬ 
ing instinct Jefferson Hope picked his way among 
the great bowlders and along the bed of a dried-up 
watercourse, until he came to the retired corner, 
screened with rocks, where the faithful animals 
had been picketed. The girl was placed upon the 
mule and old Ferrier upon one of the horses, with 
his money-bag, while Jefferson Hope led the other 
along the precipitous and dangerous paths. 

It was a bewildering route for any one who 
was not accustomed to face Nature in her wildest 
moods. On the one side a great crag towered up 
a thousand feet or more, black, stern, and menac¬ 
ing, with long basaltic columns upon his rugged 
surface like the ribs of some petrified monster. 
On the other hand, a wild chaos of bowlders and 
debris made all advance impossible. Between the 
two ran the irregular track, so narrow in places 
that they had to travel in Indian file, and so rough 
that only practiced riders could have traversed it 
at all. Yet, in spite of all dangers and difficul- 


217 


A. CONAN DOYLE 

ties, the hearts of the fugitives were light within 
them, for every step increased the distance between 
them and the terrible despotism from which they 
were flying. 

They soon had a proof, however, that they were 
still within the jurisdiction of the Saints. They 
had reached the very wildest and most desolate 
portion of the pass, when the girl gave a startled 
cry and pointed upward. On a rock which over¬ 
looked the track, showing out dark and plain 
against the sky, there stood a solitary sentinel. He 
saw them as soon as they perceived him, and his 
military challenge of “Who goes there?” rang 
through the silent ravine. 

“Travelers for Nevada,” said Jefferson Hope, 
with his hand upon the rifle which hung by his 
saddle. 

They could see the lonely watcher fingering his 
gun, and peering down at them as if dissatisfied 
at their reply. 

“By whose permission?” he asked. 

“The Holy Four,” answered Ferrier. His Mor¬ 
mon experiences had taught him that that was the 
highest authority to which he could refer. 

“Nine to seven,” cried the sentinel. 

“Seven to five,” returned Jfefferson Hope 
promptly, remembering the countersign which he 
had heard in the garden. 

“Pass, and the Lord go with you,” said the voice 
from above. 

Beyond this post the path broadened out, and 


218 


THE AVENGERS 


the horses were able to break into a trot. Looking 
back, they could see the solitary watcher leaning 
upon his gun, and knew that they had passed the 
outlying post of the Chosen People, and that free¬ 
dom lay before them. 

V 

All night long their course lay through intricate 
defiles and over irregular and rock-strewn paths. 
More than once they lost their way, but Hope’s 
intimate knowledge of the mountains enabled them 
to regain the track once more. When morning 
broke a scene of marvelous though savage beauty 
lay before them. In every direction the great snow¬ 
capped peaks hemmed them in, peeping over one 
another’s shoulders to the far horizon. So steep 
were the rocky banks on either side of them that 
the larch and the pine seemed to be suspended 
over their heads, and to need only a gust of wind 
to come hurtling down upon them. Nor was the 
fear entirely an illusion, for the barren valley was 
thickly strewn with trees and bowlders which had 
fallen in a similar manner. Even as they passed 
a great rock came thundering down with a hoarse 
rattle which woke the echoes in the silent gorges, 
and startled the weary horses into a gallop. 

As the sun rose slowly above the eastern horizon 
the caps of the great mountains lighted up one 
after the other, like lamps at a festival, until they 
were all ruddy and glowing. The magnificent spec¬ 
tacle cheered the hearts of the three fugitives and 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


219 


gave them fresh energy. At a wild torrent which 
swept out of a ravine they called a halt and watered 
their horses, while they partook of a hasty break¬ 
fast. Lucy and her father would fain have rested 
longer, but Jefferson Hope was inexorable. 

“They will be upon our track by this time,” he 
said. “Everything depends upon our speed. Once 
safe in Carson, we may rest for the remainder of 
our lives.” 

During the whole of that day they struggled on 
through the defiles, and by evening they calculated 
that they were over thirty miles from their enemies. 
At night-time they chose the base of a beetling crag, 
where the rocks offered some protection from the 
chill wind, and there, huddled together for warmth, 
they enjoyed a few hours’ sleep. Before daybreak, 
however, they were up and on their way once more. 
They had seen no signs of any pursuers, and Jeffer¬ 
son Hope began to think that they were fairly out 
of the reach of the terrible organization whose 
enmity they had incurred. He little knew how far 
that iron grasp could reach, or how soon it was to 
close upon them and crush them. 

About the middle of the second day of their 
flight their scanty store of provisions began to run 
out. This gave the hunter little uneasiness, for 
there was game to be had among the mountains, and 
he had frequently before had to depend upon his 
rifle for the needs of life. Choosing a sheltered nook 
he piled together a few dry branches and made a 
blazing fire, at which his companions might warm 


220 


THE AVENGERS 


themselves, for they were now nearly five thousand 
feet above sea-level, and the air was bitter and 
keen. Having tethered the horses and bid Lucy 
adieu, he threw his gun over his shoulder and set 
out in search of whatever chance might throw in 
his way. Looking back, he saw the old man and 
the young girl crouching over the blazing fire, 
while the three animals stood motionless in the 
background. Then the intervening rocks hid them 
from his view. 

He walked for a couple of miles through one 
ravine after another without success, though from 
the marks upon the bark of the trees and other indi¬ 
cations he judged that there were numerous bears 
in the vicinity. At last, after two or three hours’ 
fruitless search, he was thinking of turning back 
in despair, when, casting his eyes upward, he saw 
a sight which sent a thrill of pleasure through his 
heart. On the edge of a jutting pinnacle, three or 
four hundred feet above him, there stood a creature 
somewhat resembling a sheep in appearance, but 
armed with a pair of gigantic horns. The big-horn 
—for so it is called—was acting, probably, as a 
guardian over a flock which were invisible to the 
hunter; but fortunately it was heading in the 
opposite direction, and had not perceived him. 
Lying on his back, he rested his rifle on a rock and 
took a long and steady aim before drawing the 
trigger. The animal sprang into the air, tottered 
for a moment upon the edge of the precipice, and 
then came crashing down into the valley beneath. 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


221 


The creature was too unwieldy to lift, so the hun¬ 
ter contented himself with cutting away one haunch 
and part of the flank. With this trophy over his 
shoulder, he hastened to retrace his steps, for the 
evening was already drawing in. He had hardly 
started, however, before he realized the difficulty 
which faced him. In his eagerness he had wan¬ 
dered far past the ravines which were known to 
him, and it was no easy matter to pick out the path 
which he had taken. The valley in which he found 
himself divided and subdivided into many gorges, 
which were so like one another that it was impossi¬ 
ble to distinguish one from the other. He followed 
one for a mile or more until he came to a mountain 
torrent which he was sure that he had never seen 
before. Convinced that he had taken the wrong 
turn, he tried another, but with the same result. 
Night was coming on rapidly, and it was almost 
dark before he at last found himself in a defile 
which was familiar to him. Even then it was no 
easy matter to keep to the right track, for the moon 
had not yet risen and the high cliffs on either side 
made the obscurity more profound. Weighed 
down with his burden, and weary from his exer¬ 
tions, he stumbled along, keeping up his heart by 
the reflection that every step brought him nearer to 
Lucy, and that he carried with him enough to insure 
them food for the remainder of the journey. 

He had now come to the mouth of the very defile 
in which he had left them. Even in the darkness he 
could recognize the outlines of the cliffs which 


222 


THE AVENGERS 


bounded it. They must, he reflected, be awaiting 
him anxiously, for he had been absent nearly five 
hours. In the gladness of his heart he put his hands 
to his mouth and made the glen re-echo to a loud 
halloo as a signal that he was coming. He paused 
and listened for an answer. None came save his 
own cry, which clattered up the dreary, silent 
ravines and was borne back to his ears in countless 
repetitions. Again he shouted, even louder than 
before, and again no whisper came back from the 
friends whom he had left such a short time ago. 
A vague, nameless dread came over him, and he 
hurried onward frantically, dropping the precious 
food in his agitation. 

When he turned the corner he came in full sight 
of the spot where the fire had been lighted. There 
was still a glowing pile of wood-ashes there, but 
it had evidently not been tended since his depar¬ 
ture. The same dead silence still reigned all round. 
With his fears all changed to convictions, he hur¬ 
ried on. There was no living creature near the 
remains of the fire; animals, man, maiden, all were 
gone. It was only too clear that some sudden and 
terrible disaster had occurred during his absence 
—a disaster which had embraced them all and yet 
had left no traces behind it. 

Bewildered and stunned by this blow, Jefferson 
Hope felt his head spin around, and had to lean 
upon his rifle to save himself from falling. He 
was essentially a man of action, however, and 
speedily recovered from his temporary impotence. 


A. CONAN DOYLE 


223 


Seizing a half-consumed piece of wood from the 
smouldering fire he blew it into a flame, and pro¬ 
ceeded with its help to examine the little camp. 
The ground was all stamped down by the feet of 
horses, showing that a large party of mounted men 
had overtaken the fugitives, and the direction of 
their tracks proved that they had afterward turned 
back to Salt Lake City. Had they carried back 
both of his companions with them? Jefferson Hope 
had almost persuaded himself that they must have 
done so, when his eye fell upon an object which 
made every nerve of his body tingle within him. 
A little way on one side of the camp was a low- 
lying heap of reddish soil, which had assuredly 
not been there before. There was no mistaking it 
for anything but a newly dug grave. As the young 
hunter approached it he perceived that a stick had 
been planted on it, with a sheet of paper stuck in 
the cleft fork of it. The inscription on the paper 
was brief, but to the point: 

JOHN FERRIER, 

Formerly of Salt Lake City. 

Died August 4, 1860. 

The sturdy old man, whom he had left so short 
a time before, was gone, then, and this was all his 
epitaph. Jefferson Hope looked wildly round to 
see if there was a second grave, but there was no 
sign of one. Lucy had been carried back by their 


224 


THE AVENGERS 


terrible pursuers to fulfil her original destiny, by 
becoming one of the harem of the elder’s son. As 
the young fellow realized the certainty of her fate 
and his own powerlessness to prevent it, he wished 
that he, too, was lying with the old farmer in his 
last silent resting-place. 






























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